About

Sit Stand Stretch — a standing desk timer for the whole working day

Sit Stand Stretch is a free standing desk timer that runs a repeating posture cycle through your working day and tells you, unmissably, every time it is your turn to change. It ships as sit → stand → stretch: work sitting for a while, raise the desk and keep working standing, then step away and move. It runs entirely in your browser, needs no account, and sends nothing anywhere.

A cycle you can edit, not a fixed twenty-five minutes

Most desk timers give you one interval and a start button. Here the cycle is a list you own: add, remove, rename, recolour and reorder phases, anywhere from one to eight of them. Delete Stretch if you never do it. Add a Walk after it. Rename Sit to Focus, set it to twenty-five minutes, and run the whole thing as a pomodoro timer with a real break built into the loop.

Each phase carries its own length, its own accent colour, and two switches: whether its minutes count toward the day's totals, and whether entering it opens a checklist. Phases with a checklist keep their own list, so you can write down what you meant to do in the stretch break long before the break arrives. Durations stay adjustable inline, including for the phase running right now.

A reminder that interrupts, and numbers that don't flatter you

A reminder you miss because you were heads-down in another window is the one failure a posture timer cannot survive. Every transition here holds until you acknowledge it: the clock stops at zero, a chime plays, the tab title changes, a desktop notification fires, and nothing advances until you say so.

That single decision is also what keeps the statistics honest. Standing time you did not spend is never credited. If you walk away for ninety minutes in the middle of a stand phase, the day's total gains the same minutes it would have gained had you come back after eight — the app cannot see your desk, so it refuses to guess.

There are no streaks, no badges, and nothing turns red. A missed stretch is not a failure.

No account, no tracking, nothing leaves your machine

There is no sign-up, no email field, and no backend to sign up to. The app makes zero network requests while it runs: no analytics, no telemetry, no fonts pulled from a CDN. Everything you configure — your phases, their durations, your checklists and the day's history — is stored in your own browser's localStorage, in plain text, on the machine you are sitting at.

That also means it is single-device by design. Nothing syncs, because there is nothing to sync it through. The whole thing is open source, and you can read every line of it on GitHub. The privacy page says the same thing in the words a privacy policy needs.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I stand up at a standing desk?

There is no single agreed number, and this is general information rather than medical advice. A widely cited expert statement published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2015 suggested office workers accumulate at least two hours a day of standing and light activity during working hours, progressing towards four. A frequently quoted rule of thumb from Cornell University ergonomics research is twenty minutes sitting, eight standing and two moving in every half hour. Sit Stand Stretch ships with 30 / 8 / 3 and expects you to change it — the interval that matters most is the one you will actually keep to.

Is Sit Stand Stretch free?

Yes. There is no paid tier, no trial and no upsell — and no adverts, which is usually what pays for a free tool.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no sign-up and no login. Open the page and press Start.

Does it work offline?

Partly. Once the page is open it needs no network at all, so a dropped connection will not interrupt a running timer. There is no service worker, so loading it in the first place still requires the site to be reachable.

Where is my data stored?

In your browser's localStorage, under a single key, on your own machine. It is plain text, readable by any script on the origin, and it is never sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data clears it.

Can I change the intervals?

Yes. Every phase's length, name, colour and position is editable, and you can have between one and eight phases. Durations can be changed inline, including for the phase currently running.

Will it notify me if I'm working in another window?

Yes, if you allow notifications. Each transition plays a chime, changes the tab title and fires a desktop notification — and the timer waits for you to acknowledge it rather than moving on without you.

Which browsers does it work in?

Any current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, on desktop or mobile. It requires JavaScript.