How the score is worked out
The clock starts on your first click, and that click counts. When time is up the score is hits divided by seconds. 62 hits in 10 seconds is 6.20 CPS, no rounding tricks. Holding Space down does nothing, because key-repeat events get thrown away. Every hit has to be a real press.
You get three more numbers after each run. Peak second is the most hits you fit into any one-second window. Cadence, from 0 to 100, says how even your gaps were: a metronome would score 100, and a burst-pause-burst run lands somewhere near 30. Second half compares the back half of the run with the front half, so you can see how much you faded.
There is also a technique guess. It only sees the gaps between hits, so treat it as a hint. Jitter, butterfly and drag clicking each leave a different pattern. The jitter and butterfly pages explain what the detector looks for.
Rhythm mode
Speed is half of clicking well. The other half is control, and the Rhythm mode trains that on its own. Pick a tempo from 4 to 10 ticks a second. Your first hit starts a metronome, and for ten seconds the job is to land one hit on every tick: not faster, not slower. The pad flashes on each tick and you hear a click, with a higher one on every full second so you can count along.
The result is the share of ticks you hit. A hit counts if it lands within 30 percent of the gap between ticks, so ±37 ms at 8 a second and ±27 ms at 10. You also see whether you tend to rush ahead or drag behind the tick, and by how much. Extra hits between ticks don't help, they just show up as extras. Rhythm runs aren't posted to the leaderboard; they are practice.
If your timed runs fade badly in the second half, ten minutes of this at a tempo just under your comfortable speed does more than another ten flat-out runs.
Is my score any good?
I don't have a big pile of results to draw a real curve from yet. So this table is a rough guide, built from the numbers people usually report for 5 and 10 second runs with one finger. A 1 second burst always reads higher and a full minute always reads lower. Compare runs of the same length.
| CPS | Level | Usually means |
|---|---|---|
| under 4 | Warming up | Relaxed clicking, or a trackpad |
| 4 to 6 | Average | Most people on a first try |
| 6 to 8 | Quick | Plays games regularly |
| 8 to 10 | Fast | Practised single-finger clicking |
| 10 to 12 | Very fast | Jitter or butterfly technique |
| 12+ | Elite | Two-finger techniques, drag clicking |
Timing, for the curious
- Hits are stamped with
performance.now()onpointerdown, not onclick. You are not waiting for the button to come back up. - A basic USB mouse reports 125 times a second, so on that hardware two clicks can never be closer than 8 ms. Gaming mice at 1000 Hz bring that down to 1 ms.
- Each hit is accepted or dropped by its own timestamp. If it lands after the last millisecond it doesn't count, even when the display hasn't caught up yet.
- Your best run for each length is stored in this browser together with its hit times. On the next attempt it plays back as a ghost, and the line under the counters shows how many hits you are ahead or behind.
Questions
Why is my 1 second score so much higher than my 10 second score?
The first hit lands at zero on the clock. A 1 second run is really that free hit plus whatever you squeeze into the next second. Over 10 seconds it barely matters. Over 1 second it is 10 to 15 percent of the score, and you also have no time to get tired.
Does the spacebar count the same as a mouse click?
Yes, one press and release is one hit. Spacebar numbers tend to come out a bit lower because the key travels further than a mouse button. There is a separate spacebar counter with longer modes.
Is anything uploaded?
Not unless you choose to. Scores and hit times live in your browser's local storage until you clear it. The only time a run leaves the browser is when you press Post to leaderboard; what gets sent is listed on the privacy page.
What happens if I use an auto clicker?
It runs, and the result gets the "Suspiciously even" label. Humans can't hold gaps identical to within a few percent. Flagged runs are kept out of your personal bests.