Rapid Trigger Test

What is this tool?

Rapid Trigger is a feature of Hall-effect and other analogue keyboards: instead of waiting for the key to rise past a fixed reset point, the switch re-arms as soon as the key starts moving back up. The practical effect is a shorter gap between one press ending and the next beginning.

This test measures that gap. Each cycle is recorded as keydown → keyup → next keydown, giving three numbers: hold (how long the key was down), reset gap (how long it was up before the next press) and cycle (the two combined).

Runs last five seconds. Operating-system auto-repeat events are discarded, so only genuinely new presses count towards the figures.

How to use it

1. Choose the keyPress the key you want to test, or use the SPACEBAR, SHIFT and CTRL shortcuts. Whichever key starts the run is the only one measured.
2. Tap for five secondsFull presses — all the way down, all the way up — as fast as you can sustain. Partial presses do not complete a cycle and so do not appear in the averages.
3. Read the reset gapThis is the number Rapid Trigger is supposed to shrink. Both the average and the single fastest reset in the run are reported.
4. Pin a baseline, then change one thingPress Pin as Baseline, then change exactly one variable — turn Rapid Trigger on, adjust its sensitivity, or swap keyboards — and press Run Again. The comparison is only meaningful if nothing else moved.

What the results mean

Reset gap

Milliseconds between a key releasing and the next press arriving. This is the headline figure: a working Rapid Trigger implementation, tapped hard, produces a visibly smaller reset gap than the same hand on a conventional switch.

Hold and cycle

Hold is keydown to keyup; cycle is the whole press-release-press loop. Reset share expresses the reset gap as a percentage of the cycle — a lower share means more of your time is spent actually pressing rather than waiting for the key to re-arm.

Rate and BPM

Rate is completed cycles per second. The BPM readout multiplies that rate by 15, which converts presses per second into the 16th-note beats-per-minute scale rhythm-game players think in. Best-second is the highest number of cycles completed in any one-second window of the run.

Variation

The spread of your cycle times, as a coefficient of variation in percent. A low figure means an even rhythm; a high one means the average is hiding a lot of scatter.

What it can detect

• Average and fastest reset gap, in milliseconds
• Average hold time and full cycle time
• Completed cycles per second, and the same figure expressed as BPM
• Rhythm consistency, as a percentage variation across cycles
• The difference a settings change makes, when compared against a pinned baseline

Limits worth knowing

A browser can only report what the platform gives it. These are the honest boundaries of this page, so a result is never read as more than it is.

• This does not measure your actuation point in millimetres, and the page says so in its own FAQ. A browser receives binary key events — down and up — and nothing about switch travel, actuation depth or reset distance.
• It also does not measure polling rate. The two are related but separate: polling affects how often the keyboard reports, this measures the gap between your presses arriving.
• Every figure includes operating-system and browser scheduling. Comparing two runs on the same machine is sound; comparing your numbers with someone else's setup is not.
• Losing window focus mid-run discards the run rather than reporting a corrupted one.

Tips

• Change one variable at a time against a pinned baseline. That is the only way to attribute a difference to the setting you changed.
• Tap fully. A half press that never crosses the release threshold does not complete a cycle and will not lower your reset gap.
• Close background applications before a comparison run. Scheduling noise moves these numbers by more than most settings do.

Troubleshooting

Related documentation

• KeyboardKeyboard Polling Rate TestMeasures the auto-repeat rate in Hz while you hold a key, with jitter and consistency.
• KeyboardSOCD & Snap Tap TestA guided three-trial check for opposing-key behaviour: Snap Tap, neutral, first-input or none.
• KeyboardKeyboard Double-Click TestApplies a millisecond threshold to press-to-press timing and calls out chatter.
• KeyboardKey Press TestTimes each press: how long you held it, and how long since the last one.
• KeyboardKeyboard Clicker TestMeasures how many times per second you can press a chosen key, across four techniques.