Rounds user manual

Rounds is a loud, clear interval timer. Pick one of 16 presets or build your own timer, press play, and follow the beeps. It is free, needs no account, and your timers stay on your device.

Getting started

Open rounds.anonacondacodelab.com in your phone's browser.
Turn the phone's media volume up. The beeps are high-pitched so they carry over music and traffic.
Tap the ▶ button on any preset to start it. You get three seconds to get ready, then the first round begins.

To use Rounds like an app, add it to your home screen (in Chrome: menu → Add to home screen or Install app). It then has its own icon, opens full screen and works offline.

How the beeps work

Into work: three short beeps, one per second, then a long high beep: go.
Out of work: three short beeps, then a long low beep: stop.
Finished: a rising three-note beep.
Halfway beep (optional): one short beep halfway through work rounds of 2 minutes or more. Switch it on in Settings.

The beeps are scheduled in advance on the phone's audio clock, so they stay on time even if the screen is busy. Rounds allows for the delay before a phone's speaker actually plays a sound, and re-times the beeps if the audio and the timer drift apart, so you hear each beep as the timer changes. Use Test the beeps in Settings to hear them all.

The home screen

Presets are listed under the goal chips: Short on time, Heart & endurance, Fitness & VO₂max, Speed & power and Circuits & strength. Tap a chip to see only the presets for that goal, or All.
↓ Hardest first sorts the presets from hardest to easiest, judged by how hard the efforts are, how short the rests and how much there is in total. Each preset then shows its rank (#1 is the hardest).
About on a preset explains what it is, how to do it, why it works and where it comes from.
☆ adds a timer to ★ Favourites at the top of the screen. Tap ★ again to remove it.
Customise opens a preset in the editor as your own copy; the original stays as it was.
Your timers lists the timers you've made, with Edit on each.

The presets

Tabata: 20 s all-out, 10 s rest, 8 rounds
One-Minute Workout: Gibala: 3 × 20 s all-out in 10 minutes
Gibala 10 × 1: 10 × 1 min hard, 1 min easy
Gibala sprint intervals: 4 × 30 s all-out, 4 min easy
Little method: 60 s hard, 75 s easy, 12 rounds
10-20-30: 30 s slow, 20 s steady, 10 s sprint; 3 blocks
4 × 4 Norwegian: 4 min hard, 3 min easy, with warm-up and cool-down
Tempo intervals: 3 × 5 min at threshold, 5 min easy
Pyramid 1-2-3-2-1: Work 1, 2, 3, 2, 1 min with equal rest
Fartlek: 20 min of random surges
30 / 30: 30 s on, 30 s off, 10 rounds
EMOM 10: Every minute on the minute, 10 minutes
AMRAP 15: As many rounds as possible in 15 minutes
HIIT 40 / 20: 5 exercises × 3 sets, 1 min between sets
Boxing rounds: 3 min rounds, 1 min rest, 12 rounds
Core 45 / 15: 45 s hold, 15 s switch, 8 rounds

All-out sprints are very demanding. If you are new to hard exercise or have a heart condition, check with a doctor first, and build up gradually.

Making your own timer

Tap + New timer, or Customise on a preset. The total time updates as you go.

Name: shown at the top while the timer runs.
Work and Rest: the length of each work and rest period. Tap the value to type a time, or use − and +.
Rounds: how many times work and rest repeat. There is no rest after the last round.
Sets and Break between sets: repeat the whole block of rounds, with a longer break in between. The break replaces the last rest of each set.
Warm-up and Cool-down: an easy period before the first round and after the last.
Exercise names (optional): one per line. Each work round shows the next name in order, and spoken cues read it out, which is handy for circuits.
Custom steps: for patterns that aren't a simple work and rest, such as 10-20-30 or a pyramid, tap Use custom steps. Each round is then a list of steps, each with its own length and label. Work steps get the 3-2-1 beeps; rest steps are easy or recovery.

Tap Save to keep the timer under Your timers, or Start to run it straight away. Delete removes a timer you made.

While a timer runs

The whole screen changes colour with the phase, so you can see from across the room whether it's work or rest.
The ring empties as the current period runs down, with the time left in the middle. Above it is the phase and the round (for example Round 3 / 8 · Set 1 / 2); below it, what comes next.
Skip warm-up appears during a warm-up and jumps straight to the first round.
Pause stops the timer and the beeps; tap again to carry on.
Back (⏮) goes back to the start of the current period (or the previous one, if you're in the first two seconds); Skip (⏭) skips to the next period.
End asks you to tap again within three seconds, so a stray tap can't stop your workout.
The screen stays on while a timer runs.

When the timer finishes, you see how many work rounds you did and the total time. Again runs the same timer once more; Home goes back to the list.

Spoken cues and vibration

In Settings:

Spoken cues says "Get ready", "Work", "Rest", "Round 3 of 8" and exercise names as each period starts. It uses the phone's own voice, so it works offline once a voice is installed.
Vibrate at each change: a long buzz when work starts and two short buzzes at every other change, on phones that support it.
Halfway beep: see How the beeps work.

Heart rate (optional)

Tap ♥ at the top of the home screen, or beside the dial during a timer, and choose your strap or watch in the list. Any device that shares standard Bluetooth heart rate works: Polar, Garmin HRM-Dual or HRM-Pro, Wahoo TICKR, Coospo and most others, including many watches in "broadcast heart rate" mode.

Your heart rate is shown during the timer, and the finish screen shows your average and peak heart rate in the work rounds. Readings are only shown, never saved or sent. Tap ♥ twice to disconnect.

In a browser this needs Chrome or Chromium on Android or a computer, or the free Bluefy browser on iPhone and iPad. If the browser can't use Bluetooth, the ♥ button simply doesn't appear.

Backing up your timers

In Settings → Your timers:

Save timers to file saves your own timers, favourites and settings in one file. Keep it as a backup, or use it to move your timers to another phone or browser.
Import timers adds the timers from such a file. Timers you already have are kept; a timer that is already there is replaced by the copy in the file, and favourites are combined.

Your timers are stored in the browser on this device. Clearing the browser's site data deletes them, so save a backup now and then if you have many.

Privacy

Rounds has no server, no account and no tracking. Your timers stay on your device, and heart rate is shown only, never saved or sent. Opening the web app is an ordinary visit to its website, like any page; after that, the only thing it ever asks that website for is a newer copy of itself, so updates arrive. The Android app has no internet permission at all.

Translating the page. If you use your browser's Translate button, the browser sends the page's text to its translation service (Google's, in Chrome). Rounds marks your timer names and heart rate so the translator leaves them out: only the app's own buttons and labels are translated.

The Android app

Rounds is also an Android app: the same app, with the timer, beeps and spoken cues keeping going while the screen is off, and no internet permission at all. It is not on Google Play; download it from rounds.anonacondacodelab.com/android.html, which also explains how to install it and how to check that it's the official build. When you start your first timer, it asks to show a notification: that notification is what keeps it running with the screen off.

The Android app keeps its own timers, separate from the web app. To move them across, use Settings → Save timers to file in the web app, then Import timers in the Android app. Updates install over the old version and keep your timers; Settings → Check for updates tells you when a new version is out.

Questions

Why can't I hear the beeps? Check the phone's media volume (not the ringer volume), that the phone isn't on silent for media, and that no other app is holding the audio. Use Test the beeps in Settings.

The timer stopped when I locked the phone. Browsers pause pages in the background. Keep the screen on (Rounds does this for you while a timer runs). The Rounds Android app keeps the beeps and voice cues going with the screen off. If a phone still stops it after a few minutes, set the app's battery use to Unrestricted in Android's settings.

Does Rounds work offline? Yes, once you've opened it once. Adding it to your home screen makes this more reliable.

Is it free? Yes. No subscription, no account and no ads. If you find it useful, you can support it on Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/anonacondacodelab.

Support

Questions or problems: hello@anonacondacodelab.com. A description or a screenshot is usually enough. Rounds is free software under the GNU GPL v3; the source code is at github.com/Anonaconda-CodeLab/rounds