Custom Timer

A custom interval timer is a sequence you define one interval at a time. There is no template underneath — no fixed rounds, no work-to-rest ratio, no repeating structure. You add intervals to a list, give each one its own name, duration, and color, and the timer runs them in order from first to last, signaling every transition with sounds and announcements.

That makes it the opposite of a protocol timer. A Tabata timer asks for one decision — which exercise — and the structure does the rest. A custom timer asks you to make every decision, and in exchange it can run any sequence you can write down.

Reach for it whenever the durations vary. Pyramids and ladders — 30 seconds, then 45, then 60, then back down — cannot be expressed as uniform rounds. Neither can a session where the reps climb from set to set and the work intervals need to grow with them, or a workout that mixes kinds of work: a strength block, then conditioning, then a long stretch to finish, each on its own clock.

It is also the timer for everything that is not a workout. The presets above include a structured music practice session, a pomodoro deep-work sprint, and a ten-minute mobility flow — three sequences with nothing in common except that every segment needed its own name and its own length.

Write the session down before you open the editor: what happens, in what order, for how long. Each line becomes one interval. Name intervals what you want to hear when they begin — Hip Flexor Stretch, not Interval 4 — and mark recovery periods as rests so the sequence reads clearly.

Then stop. The temptation with a blank canvas is to choreograph every minute, but sequences with a clear shape — work, rest, work, longer break — are far easier to follow mid-session than ones where no two intervals relate. If you find yourself entering the same work-and-rest pair for the eighth time, that is a sign a simpler timer type would build it faster.

Custom is the most flexible timer type and the most work to set up, so reach for it last, not first. If your session is one work duration and one rest duration repeated — 40 seconds on, 20 off — a HIIT timer builds it from a handful of numbers. If it is the classic 20 on, 10 off for eight rounds, that is Tabata. If it cycles through several named exercises in repeating rounds, a Circuit timer handles the repetition for you. Custom earns its keep when the sequence will not fit any of those shapes.

The presets above show the range — practice, focus, mobility. Start from whichever is closest and reshape it in the editor, or open a blank timer and build your own sequence, one interval at a time.