Websites to Visit When You’re Bored

Every list of “websites to visit when bored” is the same forty links, half of them dead, written by a company that sells hosting. This one is sorted by how long you have and what you actually want, and everything on it is checked.

If you would rather not choose, press this and we will pick for you.

If you have one minute

Single-purpose sites. No account, no tutorial, no commitment.

• Pointer Pointer — move your mouse, get a photo of a real person pointing at exactly where your cursor is. Works far more often than it should.
• Patatap — every letter key is a sound and an animation. There is no way to be bad at it.
• The Useless Web — one button, one random pointless website. The purest version of this whole idea.

More in the same vein in the useless buttons collection.

If you have ten minutes

Enough time to get absorbed in something small.

• Window Swap — the view from a stranger\u2019s window, somewhere else in the world. The closest the web gets to looking out of a train.
• Neal.fun — a whole collection of interactive toys that quietly teach you something. Scale, deep sea, time, money.
• Internet Artifacts — scroll through the history of the web, object by object.

If you want to play something

Browser games that need no install and no account. The full set is in the Browser Games Hall of Fame — sixteen entries, all checked.

Start with Universal Paperclips if you have an afternoon to lose, Gartic Phone if you have friends online, or Lichess if you want something with actual depth.

If you want to be mildly unsettled

The weird end. Liminal spaces, the Backrooms, and the rest of the rabbit holes. Set aside more time than you think.

If you want to know something about yourself instead

We keep about thirty short quizzes and thirty calculators. Most take under two minutes. The tab one is the one people argue about.

The full lists

• Weird Websites Database — twenty entries, sortable and searchable
• Online Time Wasters — ranked, for when you want the good ones first
• Nostalgia Websites Vault — the old web, still running

We check these for dead links regularly, because a “best websites” list full of 404s is worse than no list. If you find one that has died, tell us.

Or pick the version that fits your situation

• Bored at work — silent, fast, closes in one keystroke
• Bored at night — nothing with an endless feed
• Bored on your phone — touch only, no mouse required
• Bored with friends — shared link, no installs, no accounts
• Scrolling rather than bored — swaps that actually end

More in Weird Web, or read why the pointless corner of the internet outlasted the useful one.