Three ways to use it
- Timed (1s to 60s). The usual speed test. Presses divided by seconds gives your rate, and 10 seconds is the length most people compare.
- 100 presses. A race against the clock instead of a count against a timer. The result is your time to the hundredth press, to two decimals. It is a better challenge to send a friend because nobody argues about which test length you used.
- Tally. No timer. Every press adds one, Backspace or the Undo button takes the last one back, and Stop ends the count. Good for counting reps, laps or people through a door. If your presses are evenly spaced it also shows the tempo in BPM.
What a normal spacebar speed looks like
With one thumb, first attempts over 10 seconds mostly land between 5 and 7 presses a second. Alternating two thumbs, or thumb and index finger, is where 9 to 12 comes from. The spacebar is slower than a mouse button for the same hand. The key is wide and heavy, it sits on a stabiliser bar, and it has to travel back up before it will register again.
The keyboard matters more than you would expect. Laptop keys travel 1 to 1.5 mm and reset quickly. A mechanical board travels around 4 mm, but the switch fires at about 2 mm, and if you learn to hover near that point you don't have to bottom out. A spacebar that rattles or sticks on one side will cost you presses, and you will see it in the cadence number.
Things people ask
Holding the key gives me one press. Bug? No, that is on purpose. Your operating system repeats a held key about 30 times a second, and if I counted those, the top of every scoreboard would be people leaning on the key.
The page used to scroll when I pressed Space. Not here. Space is captured on this page so the first press starts the run and nothing jumps.
Does it count other keys? Only Space. Mouse clicks and taps on the pad count too, because phones have no spacebar. If you want a pure click test, use the CPS test.
Where did my best score go? Bests are stored per browser. A different browser, a private window or cleared site data starts you from zero.