Timewarp

This Pomodoro timer speeds up time.Well, at least your perception of it.

Some of the progress bars in MrBeast’s ad segments fill up quickly, then slow down. You look at the bar and think the ad is nearly over even though there’s still quite a bit left. It’s a neat trick to prevent you from skipping an ad that’s "almost" over anyway.

I came across this in Matt Parker’s video investigating those bars. He measured how they moved: fast at first, then slower toward the end. That gave me an idea.

Why not put MrBeast’s ad trick to some good use and make my daily treadmill run seem a little less tiring?

Getting the curve

I had Claude approximate the yellow bar in this MrBeast video at 18:04. The closest fit it found was this cubic Bézier curve:

cubic-bezier(0.077, 0.144, 0.086, 0.906)

I could probably use a slightly different curve to make the countdown less ridiculous at the start but I’m sticking to this one for now.

The countdown lies too

A fast bar next to an ordinary clock would give the game away, so the countdown follows the same curve. Its “seconds” aren’t a second long. They pass quickly early on, then take longer toward the end. I recommend hiding the countdown or using distraction-free mode to preserve the effect, though.

I don’t know whether knowing the trick will ruin it. I wanted to try it anyway.