I don’t know why I’ve always struggled with using timers in Thunkable. Something that should be intuitive just doesn’t seem like it to me. I don’t understand why the documentation doesn’t have a simple example of a countdown timer (or count up timer).
What am I doing wrong? Shouldn’t this setup count up by 1 every second?
And shouldn’t these blocks display 30… 29… 28… etc.? All that happens when I preview is 30…29. I’ve tried Loops enabled or disabled but it doesn’t seem to matter.
In my opinion the documentation does not really explain the Timer Time in Seconds.
If Count Up is true , returns elapsed time from the Timer’s interval in seconds
To me, this is not the same as returns elapsed time from when the timer was started, so I am not sure what exactly it means. I set the Timer Label Text to the Time in Seconds it only changes between 0 and 1 a few times and then stops.
In the meantime, I followed a tutorial and this works.
If the timer is set to enabled, you don’t need the button click as the timer fires as soon as the screen starts.
That is how I do it as well. I actually use a variable for the timer behind the scenes a lot. One issue I’ve had is that the timer is clunky meaning after a longer run it tends to be off due to the time it takes to run the process. Unfortunately there isn’t a better way unless you use the timer to repeatedly call ‘seconds since 1970’
If I enable Loops, the label displays 30, then 29, then 30. And that’s it.
Would be great if we could Thunkable staff to fullt explain the Timer - Time in seconds block.
I agree but I also think both the documentation and the component itself need an overhaul. I studied computer science and teach programming and I still don’t find it intuitive to use so what does that say for people with less experience coding?
@tatiang @steve_synopsis Agreed on the documentation issue, we’ll look into this. I know that team has lots on their plate in terms of new tutorials and the like but I can also suggest this.
Incrementing the value of the variable by -1 is the key to getting this to work.
