About us
How Nexus Timer got here
Nexus Timer started in January 2023 and has been rewritten twice since. This page goes through what changed each year, with screenshots of how it looked at the time.
- 2023January 2023
The first version
An Express app with Pug templates: It handled one thing, storing solves per user, and everything later was built on top of that.
- 2023September 2023
Rewritten on Next.js
Every change to the Pug version meant editing a template, a route and a separate script by hand, which did not scale. In September it was rewritten on Next.js 13 with React, TypeScript and Tailwind, moving rendering server side and putting the whole app under a type checker for the first time. Statistics went from a plain list to calculated averages, ao5 through ao100, deviation and personal bests. October we got the first pull requests from people wanting to contribute.
1 / 4 - 20242024
Groundwork
Most of 2024 went into work that does not show on screen. How solves are stored was changed so large sessions load quickly, the translation setup was replaced with one that could handle more than a few languages, end to end tests were added, and the average calculations were corrected to follow WCA rules. Clock was added as a category. Fewer features than any other year, and the reason the next one could move quickly.
1 / 5 - 20252025
Multiplayer, trainer, leaderboards
Development picked up in May and stayed there. Multiplayer rooms shipped in August. The algorithm trainer arrived in September, measuring execution time per case across methods. Leaderboards followed in October for keyboard solves.
1 / 4 - 20262026
Android and smart cubes
The Android app was published on Google Play in May. Smart cube support was extended to the trainer, so cases can be drilled with a Bluetooth cube instead of the keyboard. A statistics tab was added to regular solves.
1 / 5
Why it works this way
Free, open, and free of ads
Free, and staying that way
Cubing already costs enough in hardware. Timing your solves should not be behind a subscription, so every feature is available to everyone.
Open source
The whole codebase is public. Anyone can read it, fork it, question it, or send a pull request. Several of the features you use came in that way.
No ads, no tracking for sale
There are no ads and no data sold to third parties. You can export or delete your solves at any time.
What comes next
Most of what shipped this year started as someone complaining in Discord or opening an issue. If something bothers you, tell us.