About Tap the Cap
A reaction time test that does one thing properly instead of ten things badly.
What this is
Tap the Cap measures simple visual reaction time. You wait for a mushroom cap to change colour and respond as fast as you can. That is the whole test — no levels, no sign-up, no profile to fill in before you are allowed to click something.
It exists because most online reflex tests either bury the measurement under menus and animations, or publish leaderboards full of times that are physically impossible. This one keeps the interaction to a single click and documents exactly what the number means, including the parts of it that come from your monitor rather than from you.
Design decisions
- Randomised waiting interval. Between 1 and 4 seconds, so the moment cannot be anticipated by counting.
- Colour change rather than a new object. Peripheral vision detects appearing objects too early; changing an object you are already looking at is a cleaner stimulus.
- False starts discarded. Pressing early restarts the round, so button-mashing cannot generate a score.
- Validation floor at 100 ms. Faster than that is anticipation, not reaction, and letting such times onto the board would make the whole ranking worthless.
- No accounts. Personal records stay in your browser. The global ranking stores numbers and nothing else.
Who makes it
Tap the Cap is built and maintained by Scriptos.eu. The browser version at ttc.cool is the reference implementation; an Android build of the same game also exists.
Contact
Bug reports, questions about the methodology, licensing enquiries or requests to use the test in a classroom or research setting: contact@ttc.cool.
If you think a leaderboard entry is not legitimate, write in — the validation rules are documented on the leaderboard page and they get tightened when someone finds a way around them.
Related pages
- How the measurement works — the timing loop and where the milliseconds come from.
- Average reaction times — what counts as normal, and what changes it.
- Tips — how to get a faster score, and what does not help.
- FAQ — short answers to the common questions.