Ninja Timer’s Biggest Update Yet: A New Era of Competition Management
We’re incredibly excited to announce the biggest update in Ninja Timer’s history.
After months of development, testing, refinement, and listening to feedback from athletes, coaches, judges, gyms, and event organisers, Ninja Timer has evolved into a significantly more powerful competition platform.
This update introduces a completely refreshed interface, a powerful new competition rules engine, advanced event management, multi-device support, enhanced athlete analytics, Practice Mode, improved reliability, and much more.
Whether you’re running a local gym competition or managing a large-scale Ninja Warrior or OCR event, Ninja Timer is designed to give you the tools to run competition with greater confidence, flexibility, and control.
🏆 A Powerful New Competition Engine
At the heart of this update is our new competition rules engine.
Ninja Timer can now handle significantly more complex competition formats, allowing organisers to configure their event around the rules they actually use.
Event settings can control:
Scoring systems
Ranking methods
Lives
Attempts
Retries
Qualification requirements
Penalties
Tie-breakers
Time limits
Warning timers
Countdown behaviour
DNF handling
Rest periods
Per-obstacle scoring
Retry behaviour
And more
This gives organisers far greater flexibility when creating competitions, without needing to work around a one-size-fits-all system.
Event Templates
To make event setup even easier, Ninja Timer now includes 14 event templates for major competition formats and organisations, including:
World Ninja League (WNL)
United Ninja Athlete Association (UNAA)
Ninja Sport Championship (NSC)
FINA
FNS
OCR/FISO
ANW
And more
Templates provide a starting point with competition rules already configured, allowing organisers to get their event ready faster while still having the flexibility to customise settings when required.
Division-Specific Rules
Not every division competes under the same rules.
Ninja Timer now allows organisers to configure rules independently for each division, giving you greater control over different age groups, skill levels, genders, and competition formats.
🥷 The New Lives & Retries System
One of the biggest additions to Ninja Timer is our significantly improved Lives and Retries system.
Organisers can configure how many lives athletes receive, how retries work, and what happens when an athlete fails an obstacle.
This provides the flexibility required for different competition formats while allowing Ninja Timer to automatically manage the impact of misses and retries on official results.
If a run is edited after the fact, Ninja Timer can dynamically recalculate the relevant result information based on the updated obstacle log.
That means changes to misses, points, lives, and obstacle results can flow through to the athlete's official score, time, and obstacle reached.
🎯 Practice Mode
Competition and training shouldn't have to be treated the same way.
Practice Mode gives athletes the opportunity to test their runs, learn obstacles, experiment with strategies, and prepare for competition without affecting official results.
Practice runs are kept separate from competition data, with automatic reset functionality and no impact on official rankings.
It’s ideal for:
Athlete preparation
Course familiarisation
Coaching sessions
Testing competition rules
Warm-ups
Training days
Gym sessions
Athletes can focus on improving without worrying about accidentally affecting competition results.
📱 Multi-Device Competition Support
Ninja Timer is no longer limited to a single device.
Our new multi-device functionality opens the door to more advanced competition setups.
Head-to-Head Competition
Run head-to-head races using multiple devices.
The devices can synchronize their starts while each timer operates independently, allowing both athletes to have their own timing and scoring information.
This creates a much more powerful setup for head-to-head competitions while maintaining independent run data on each device.
Judge Mode
Judges can now have dedicated control over their athlete's run.
Judge devices can operate independently while maintaining synchronization with the wider competition system, providing greater flexibility for events with multiple judging stations.
Local backup functionality also helps protect run information in situations where connectivity may be interrupted.
Flexible Pairing
Devices can be connected using a range of methods, including:
Wi-Fi
Local network/LAN
Mobile hotspot
Internet
QR code pairing
This flexibility allows Ninja Timer to adapt to different venues and competition environments.
📊 Powerful New Analytics
Understanding performance is just as important as recording it.
Ninja Timer now includes a significantly more powerful analytics system designed to help athletes, coaches, judges, and event organisers understand what is happening on the course.
Athlete Analytics
Dive deeper into individual performance with information such as:
Average score
Median score
Average time
Fastest time
Slowest time
Average split
Fastest split
Slowest split
Completion rate
Obstacle difficulty
Most failed obstacles
Longest obstacle performance
Obstacles cleared
Final obstacle reached
And more
This gives coaches and athletes a much clearer picture of where performance is improving and where additional work may be required.
Event Analytics
Organisers can also analyse the competition as a whole.
Ninja Timer can provide insights into:
Average scores
Median scores
Completion statistics
Obstacle difficulty
Failure rates
Athlete performance
Split performance
Competition trends
Obstacle reach
And more
Download Your Data
Need to perform deeper analysis?
Competition and analytics data can be downloaded for use outside Ninja Timer, making it easier to create reports, maintain records, analyse performance, or share information with coaches and event staff.
🥇 Enhanced Leaderboards & Results
Results have also received a major upgrade.
The new leaderboard experience provides clearer competition information with:
Medal positions
Pinned Top 3
Qualification indicators
Division filters
Gender filters
Improved ranking information
Enhanced athlete results
Organisers can get a much clearer picture of the competition while athletes can quickly understand where they stand.
⏱️ More Control Over Runs
Ninja Timer now provides greater control over individual runs and competition results.
Judges can manually edit recorded times when corrections are required.
Run order positions can also be edited, making it easier to manage changes during an event.
Search functionality has also been added to Run Order, allowing judges and organisers to quickly find athletes without scrolling through large lists.
👥 Improved Athlete Management
Managing large numbers of competitors is now easier.
Ninja Timer includes improved athlete management tools, including:
Gender information
Division management
Improved bulk athlete imports
Editable run-order positions
Faster athlete searching
Improved leaderboard filtering
Better competition organisation
These improvements are designed to reduce administrative work and help event staff stay focused on running the competition.
🏗️ Course Management & Data Export
Course information can now be imported and exported, making it easier to reuse competition setups and move course configurations between events.
Complete division data can also be exported for external reporting, analysis, records, and event administration.
This is particularly useful for organisers who need to maintain competition records outside of Ninja Timer.
🎨 A Completely Refreshed Interface
This update isn't only about what's happening behind the scenes.
Ninja Timer has received a major visual refresh.
The new interface includes:
Updated colours
Refined buttons
Cleaner layouts
Improved navigation
Better readability
More consistent screen design
Improved controls
We've also introduced a redesigned Host Dashboard, providing a clearer overview of important competition information.
Settings have been reorganised into collapsible sections, making it easier to find the features you need without navigating through a cluttered settings screen.
We've also improved Results and Settings locking to help prevent accidental changes during live competitions.
🚀 Faster, More Reliable & Better Protected
A major update isn't complete without improving what happens behind the scenes.
We've made substantial improvements to Ninja Timer's stability, performance, compatibility, and data protection.
Improved Performance
Ninja Timer is faster and more responsive, with improvements to application performance, data saving, and synchronization.
Automatic Recovery
Improved crash recovery and backup restoration help protect competition sessions if something unexpected happens.
Better Data Protection
Ninja Timer now has improved handling of corrupted or incomplete save files, reducing the risk of important competition information being lost.
Improved Synchronization
Data synchronization has been refined to provide a more reliable experience when multiple devices are involved.
Compatibility Improvements
We've also made improvements across different devices and platforms, including better safe-area handling and overall compatibility.
And, of course, this release includes a large number of smaller bug fixes, performance improvements, and quality-of-life refinements throughout the app.
🔮 What's Next?
This update represents a major milestone for Ninja Timer, but we're not stopping here.
The goal has always been to build something specifically for the Ninja Warrior and OCR community — not a generic timer adapted for competitions.
Ninja Timer is being built around the real requirements of athletes, judges, coaches, gyms, and event organisers.
That means continuing to improve the things that matter most:
Reliability. Speed. Flexibility. Competition control. Athlete performance.
We're continuing to listen to feedback, test new ideas, and develop features that can make running competitions easier and more professional.
🥷 Built for Competition. Ready for Anything.
From a small gym competition to a major Ninja Warrior or OCR event, Ninja Timer is designed to scale with you.
With powerful event rules, advanced scoring, multi-device competition support, athlete analytics, Practice Mode, enhanced results, and a completely refreshed experience, Ninja Timer has taken a major step forward.
This isn't just another update.
It's the next generation of Ninja Timer.
Thank you to every athlete, coach, judge, gym, event organiser, tester, and supporter who has helped us get here.
We're incredibly excited for you to experience what's next.
Ninja Timer
Built for Competition. Ready for Anything.
Now available on Google Play and through the web version
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