A Baduk timer that counts in Korean
Baduk (바둑) is the Korean name for the game known internationally as Go. A Baduk clock needs 초읽기 (chorilgi, "reading the seconds") — the Korean term for byo-yomi: main time, then a fixed number of periods, each resetting when you move in time. Byoyomi Timer implements it, and can read the closing seconds aloud in Korean, independently of the language the interface is set to.
초읽기 — the system, in Korean terms
The Korean 초읽기 and the Japanese 秒読み describe the same mechanism and translate the same way: reading the seconds. Korea has its own deep professional tradition around it, its own dedicated Baduk television channels, and over a million active players — the second-largest player base in the world.
The rule is the one Go players everywhere rely on: complete your move inside the period and the period resets to its full length. It is not spent. Overrun it and it is gone permanently, with the next period starting for the same move. Overrun the last one and the game is lost on time. A common club setting is 20 minutes plus five 30-second periods.
A spoken countdown is not a novelty in Korea — a Korean-style voice count is advertised as a selling point by Korean timer apps, because it is what players are used to hearing. Byoyomi Timer speaks the last ten seconds of every period, the entry into overtime, the final period and each lost period, in Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, English or German.
The interface language and the voice are separate
These are deliberately two different settings, and the reason is practical. A Korean player living in Germany may want a German interface — or a Korean one — while still hearing the count in Korean, because that is the sound the game has always made for them. Equally, a German club that plays Korean-style may want a German interface and a Korean voice for authenticity.
So the app never ties them together. The interface is available in Korean along with sixteen other languages, and the voice is chosen from Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, English and German in a separate setting.
Everything else a Baduk clock needs
- Canadian overtime with a stone counter, for clubs that use it — a block of time for a set number of stones, refilling when the quota is met.
- Fischer bonus time with an optional cap, the system the American Go Association standardised on and a common default online.
- Sudden death, per-move play and the NHK format, plus Ing overtime and Progressive overtime.
- Independent clocks per player, for teaching and handicap games — the norm in Baduk instruction.
- Pass buttons: two passes in a row stop the clock so the position can be counted.
- Large digits and two facing halves, so both players read their own side upright across the board.
- Referee tools to correct time, periods and stones mid-game.
It runs fully offline with no account and no tracking, and keeps counting on the Lock Screen through a Live Activity.
Baduk, Go, Weiqi, Igo
The game is one game with several names, and which one you search for depends on where you learned it: Baduk (바둑) in Korea, Go or Igo (囲碁) in Japan, Weiqi (围棋) in China and Taiwan, cờ vây in Vietnam. The clock is the same in all of them, and so is byo-yomi — every language uses either the Japanese term or its own literal translation of it.
If you are looking for the Chinese framing of the same app, see the Weiqi clock page.
Turn your iPhone into a real Go clock
Byoyomi Timer plays every Go time system — byo-yomi, Canadian overtime, Fischer bonus time, Ing — and reads the seconds aloud like a human timekeeper.
Coming soon to the App Store