A simple, accurate stopwatch with lap timing, millisecond precision and keyboard shortcuts. The ChrysoKit Stopwatch runs in your browser and stays accurate when the tab is hidden.
Why use it
No app to install. No ads. The keyboard shortcuts make it faster than tapping a phone screen.
How to use the Stopwatch
- Press Start (or hit the Space key).
- Press Lap to capture a checkpoint.
- Press Stop to pause; Start again to resume.
- Press Reset to wipe the slate.
Features worth knowing
Millisecond precision
Time to the millisecond, useful when small differences matter.
Lap capture
Capture intermediate times without stopping the master clock.
Keyboard shortcuts
Space to start/stop, L to lap, R to reset. Much faster than chasing buttons.
Background-safe
The timing stays accurate even when the tab is hidden; many phone stopwatches drift when backgrounded.
Pro tips
- Use Lap rather than Stop and Start. The total time stays accurate that way.
- On phones, keep the screen on; some browsers throttle background tabs aggressively.
- For very long timings (hours), the Countdown Timer is more deliberate than the Stopwatch.
Privacy first. The Stopwatch runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Bookmark the Stopwatch for cooking, exercise, presentations, and any other time you want a clean count without a phone in your hand.
Open the tool: Stopwatch →
Time-audit week: pointing a stopwatch at your own workday
An exercise borrowed from manufacturing, surprisingly brutal applied to a desk: for one week, time the routine units of your work. Not the calendar blocks... the actual tasks. Start the stopwatch when you begin "quickly checking email"; lap when you finish. Time the standup, the invoice, the code review, the report formatting, the "five-minute" social media glance.
The reliable findings, replicated by nearly everyone who tries it: tasks estimated in minutes run in multiples ("quick email" averages 23 minutes including the inbox detour that follows); meetings cost their duration plus a 10-15 minute re-focusing tail that nobody budgets; and two or three small recurring tasks, individually trivial, sum to several hours weekly... the prime candidates for batching or automation, invisible until measured.
The mechanism is the same one that makes food diaries work: measurement, not judgement. No productivity method is required, no app, no categories... just laps and honesty. By Friday you hold a personal dataset that converts vague guilt about time into two or three specific, fixable line items.
One warning from those who have run the audit: the first day's numbers feel like an accusation. Run the week anyway. The point was never the numbers; it is that estimates calibrate, and next month's "that will take twenty minutes" starts being true.