Isshuthe span of one incense stick
Incense lit in digital space — a mindfulness timer. Nothing to install; use it right here.
Open full screen ↗ Choose a scent and a length, then press “Light it”.
About this tool
- Five scents
- Sandalwood, kyara, agarwood, makko, cherry blossom. The stick changes colour with the scent, and each comes with a few words about it.
- Three holders
- A round dish in white porcelain, a lotus in bloom, a rabbit in ceramic. Set the place you sit according to the day.
- Read the time in the stick
- Five minutes is short; sixty is long. What is left of the stick is what is left of your time. You can sit without watching numbers.
- A bell at the end
- When it burns down, a single chime. In night mode, lighting it sinks the whole screen into darkness, and only the ember remains.
- Settings stay on your device
- Settings are kept in your own browser. No account, no network.
- It keeps the screen awake
- While the incense burns, the screen is kept awake. Lay the phone face down — the bell still rings when the time is up (in browsers that support it).
Use it as a gadget on your phone
Add it to your home screen and it opens as a single screen with no address bar — like an app, ready whenever the thought strikes you. On a phone the incense stands in the middle of the screen.
- iPhone (Safari)
- Press the share button (□ with ↑) at the bottom, then choose “Add to Home Screen”.
- Android (Chrome)
- Press “⋮” at the top right, then choose “Add to Home screen” or “Install app”.
Once added, it opens with no connection at all — the incense and the bell are tucked into the device beforehand, so it works the same on a plane or underground. Settings stay on that device alone. Note: whenever you open it with a connection, it updates itself to the latest version. To update right away, use “Get the latest version” at the bottom left of the screen.
Use the browser extension
Press the icon and it lays a shadow over the page you are reading, and sets the incense on top of it. Put your work down and spend one stick's worth of time, mindfully, in the corner of the screen. Note: the page underneath still clicks and scrolls as usual.
It is not on the Web Store, so please unzip the file below and load it into your own Chrome. It asks for two permissions only (activeTab and scripting); what they are used for is set out in the privacy policy.
- Unzip the file. You get a folder containing
manifest.json. - Type
chrome://extensionsinto Chrome's address bar. - Turn on Developer mode, top right.
- Press “Load unpacked”, top left, and choose the folder you unzipped.
- An incense-holder icon appears in your toolbar. Press it, and the incense settles over the page you are on.
Deleting the folder removes the extension. To update, unzip the new ZIP and overwrite the folder as it is, or press the reload button on chrome://extensions.