Reaction time test: how fast can you tap the dot?
Tap the green dot with a check mark as fast as you can. Leave the blue squares with a cross alone.
45 seconds. Your score is how fast you usually reacted.
Dots and squares appear one at a time, each in a new spot. Tap the round dot as fast as you can and leave the squares alone. Your result is how fast you usually reacted, in milliseconds, with a game score from 0 to 100.
How this reaction time test works
The game is called Quick Tap. One figure at a time appears in a square playing field. If it is a round dot with a check mark, tap it as fast as you can. If it is a square with a cross, leave it. About seven out of ten figures are dots.
Between two figures there is a pause of a quarter to three quarters of a second, different every time, so you can't tap along to a rhythm. A dot stays on screen for at most 1.4 seconds. Two dots in a row never appear right next to each other or at the far edges, which keeps the distance your finger travels roughly the same.
The time is taken the moment you touch the screen. How long your finger rests on the glass makes no difference.
How your reaction time becomes a game score
From all your taps on dots we take the middle time, the median, so looking away once doesn't spoil the round. Tap a lot of squares and a penalty is added, up to half a second for someone who taps everything. The first few wrong taps are free, because rushing is part of this game.
That time goes onto a fixed curve from 0 to 100: 700 milliseconds scores 20, 520 scores 50, 400 scores 80 and 330 scores 95. If you react to fewer than half of the dots, or tap fewer than five, there is no reliable time and the round lands at the bottom of the scale. The curve and its anchor points are explained on our scoring reference.
We show typical scores once enough people have played. Until then you see your own time and where it sits on the curve.
Why your time changes from round to round
A reaction time depends on more than the player. The screen, the delay of your touchscreen, the light in the room and whether you just had coffee all end up in the number. Two rounds played back to back can differ by thirty or forty milliseconds. On this curve that is a few points, and nothing about you has changed in between.
The score describes how this game went today, on this device. It is not a medical test and says nothing about your health.
From one game to the full Brain Check
Quick Tap is one of the five games in the free Brain Check, along with Memory Grid, Pattern Sequence, Spot the Difference and Math Sprint. Each game lasts 45 seconds, and with the instructions in between you're done in about five minutes. You get a game score for each game and a Brain Check score, the average of the five. You don't need an account.
Other single games: the memory test, the attention test, the brain test with Pattern Sequence, and all five brain games on one page.
Frequently asked questions
- Why doesn't a very fast tap count?
- A tap that lands within 150 milliseconds of the dot appearing was already on its way before the dot could be seen. Those taps are left out of the calculation. Otherwise the winning move would be to keep tapping the screen without looking.
- Does it matter if I play on a phone or a laptop?
- Yes, a little. A finger on a touchscreen behaves differently from a mouse, and every device has its own delay between your tap and the screen. If you want to compare your own rounds, play them on the same device.
- Is my score saved?
- No. A single round on this page stores no score and asks for no account. We only count that a round was played, without knowing who played it. The full Brain Check gives you a result page with all five games.