Spacebar clicker

Nobody has measured in a study how fast people press a key over and over. What exists are figures that spacebar-counter sites publish: one says the average player reaches 6 to 7 (community figure, not a norm)^[1] presses a second^[1], and another gives an average of 6.11 (community figure, not a norm)^[2]. Neither shows its method or its data, so they are community figures, not norms. The first view of a timed run sets it beside the first of them, and How we measured this draws that range with a dashed line beside your earlier runs with the same length and the same keys.

Your own numbers still tell you a lot. A short run shows how fast your fingers can go in a burst; a run of half a minute or a minute shows how long you keep it up. If your presses per second drop a lot from the first seconds to the last ones, your hand tires quickly, and a looser grip or a different finger may help.

Every press is stamped with the time the browser recorded for it. A timed run counts the presses whose stamps fall from your first press until the length you chose has passed, and nothing else. A press that arrives a little late, because the browser was busy, still counts if its stamp is inside the time. So the result is the same on a fast computer and on a slower one.

When a key is held down, the computer sends the key again and again by itself, and marks each of those as a repeat. We leave the repeats out, so the count is of your own presses. In the any-key mode every key counts except the ones that work the computer rather than type: Tab, Escape, Shift, Control, the function keys and the like. A run with more than 30 presses a second on the space bar, or with presses spaced as evenly as a machine's at speeds where a machine would help, is labelled and kept apart.

Nothing about your presses leaves this browser. The result is saved here, so you can see your history; it never goes into a link and is never sent to us. You can read about us to see who makes the site.

Most people press the space bar with a thumb, which is strong but not quick. Tapping with two fingers in turn, the way a drummer uses two sticks, usually gives more presses a second. The keyboard matters too: a key with a short, light travel comes back up faster than a long, stiff one, and a large space bar can rock and catch at its ends if you press near the edge.

• The length of the run: a burst of a few seconds is always faster than a minute.
• The keys: with any key counting, several fingers share the work and the count goes up a lot.
• Your posture: a relaxed wrist resting on the desk tires more slowly than a hand held in the air.
• Warming up: the first run of the day is often slower than the third.

Pressing a key as fast as you can is a sprint for small muscles. Shake your hand loose between runs and stop when it starts to ache. Hammering a laptop's keyboard is hard on its keys; a few runs do no harm, an afternoon of them might.