Weekly Timetable Maker

Pick a subject, click the cells, and your weekly timetable fills in

The Weekly Timetable Maker puts the classes and activities that repeat every week onto one page, laid out by day and time. Choose a subject in the subject brush bar at the top, then click a cell in the grid to paint it with that subject. Click and drag across neighboring cells to paint several at once. Click a cell that already holds the same subject and it empties, so copying the schedule your school handed out is quick: paint all the Math cells, switch brushes, paint all the Science cells, and so on.

Use periods for a school schedule and times for anything where the clock matters, such as college lectures, practices or lessons after school. In period layout the tool works out when each period starts and ends from your first bell, class length, passing time and lunch, and prints those times down the left side. In time layout you click or drag in a day column and events snap to 15 minutes. The footer row shows how many periods or hours each day holds, and the weekly totals stack up hours per subject as bars.

How to build a timetable

1. Choose a starting template. Pick Elementary, Middle, High, College or Work & life. A grid with sample subjects opens. To begin from nothing, press “Blank grid”, which clears the cells but keeps your subject list and settings.
2. Choose a layout and the days. Select Periods or Times, then show Mon–Fri, Mon–Sat or Mon–Sun.
3. Match the period times (period layout). Open the “Period times” line and set when Period 1 starts, how long a class runs, how long the passing time is, how many periods there are, and where lunch falls and how long it lasts. If only one period is different, fix that row in the table below the rule.
4. Create subjects and paint. Press “+ Subject”, then add a name, room, note and color. Paint cells with the brush. With the keyboard, move between cells with the arrow keys, press Enter to paint and Delete to clear.
5. Save it. Download a PNG or PDF when you are done. To keep editing on another device, press “Copy link” and open that address there.

How the period times are calculated

Each period starts when the previous one ends, plus the passing time. The period right after lunch is the exception: it starts after the lunch length instead of the passing time. As a formula:

Period n starts = Period 1 start + (n − 1) × (class length + passing time) + (if it follows lunch: lunch length − passing time)

The Middle template starts Period 1 at 8:00 AM with 50-minute classes, 5 minutes to pass between classes, and a 30-minute lunch after Period 4. That gives the times below. Period 7 ends at 2:45 PM: 8:00 AM plus seven classes (350 minutes), five passing breaks (25 minutes) and one lunch (30 minutes). These numbers are an example, not a rule.

With the rule unchanged, the grid shows a row only where lunch falls, and none if the lunch length is 0. If you edit the period table by hand, a row appears for any gap of 15 minutes or more that is longer than your shortest break. A row is labeled “Lunch” if its gap overlaps 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM and “Break” otherwise. If your homeroom or an assembly makes only Period 7 start late, change that one start time in the period table: the whole period moves and keeps its length. Changing an end time changes only the end.

How long is a class period?

There is no single national answer, and the official figures describe the whole school day, not one class. For US public schools, the National Center for Education Statistics reports an average school day of 6.64 hours and 180 school days a year in its 2007–08 Schools and Staffing Survey, with state averages from 6.22 hours in Washington to 7.17 hours in Texas. For state-funded mainstream schools in England, the Department for Education set the expectation of a school week of at least 32.5 hours by September 2024 at the latest, which is 6.5 hours a day over five days.

Neither source sets the length of a class, so the template lengths below are examples that follow common patterns. Use the bell schedule your own school or college publishes.

Many American colleges meet on Monday–Wednesday–Friday for 50 minutes or on Tuesday–Thursday for 75 minutes, so a three-credit class fills about 150 minutes a week either way. That pattern is common but varies by school. In the College template, Calculus I follows the 50-minute Monday–Wednesday–Friday pattern and the 75-minute classes run Monday–Wednesday or Tuesday–Thursday, which is how you would enter your own schedule from a registration page.

Periods or times: which layout should you use?

You can switch layouts at any time. Going from periods to times turns each cell into an event with that period's times. Going from times to periods puts each event into a period it overlaps by at least half of the shorter of the two (so a 20-minute event inside a 50-minute period fits), and an event that does not overlap any period that much is dropped. The tool tells you how many were dropped, and Undo restores the earlier state.

Weekly totals and the footer row

The weekly totals add up each subject's cells and their time, most hours first. In period layout it is the number of periods and their combined length. In time layout it is the number of events and their real length. The Middle template adds up as follows, and all 35 periods come to 29 hours 10 minutes.

Subjects are separate brushes, not names. If you make two “Math” brushes and use both, the totals show two Math lines, so paint one subject with one brush. If you want to count something separately, such as a lab, make a second brush called “Science Lab”. If you hide Saturday and Sunday, those cells are not deleted. They just stop counting.

College schedules: gaps and walking time

In time layout the footer row shows each day's class time and the gap, which is all the empty time between that day's first and last class. Under the weekly totals, “At a glance” lists the earliest start, the latest finish, the longest gap and the days with nothing scheduled. The College template works out like this.

Tuesday's 1 hour 30 minute gap is 1 hour 15 minutes between 11:45 AM and 1:00 PM plus 15 minutes between 2:15 PM and 2:30 PM. That short gap is the walk from Social Sciences to Language Hall, so check any gap this short against the distance between buildings. A schedule with no overlap can still be too tight to walk. When a class meets at the same time on several days, such as Monday and Wednesday, select it and use “Also add at the same time on” to place the other days in one step.

Saving, printing and moving to another device

• Save PNG: a picture file that is easy to use as a phone wallpaper or send in a message. A4 landscape is 1754 × 1240 pixels and portrait is 1240 × 1754 pixels, including the title, subtitle, grid and the subject totals legend.
• Save PDF: the same picture on one A4 page, for printing or filing. The page is A4, so on US Letter paper use the fit-to-page option in your print dialog.
• Cell style: “Filled” colors the whole cell. “Color bar” uses a pale background and a bold bar on the left, which uses less ink. “Black & white” draws outlines only so it stays readable on a black-and-white printer.
• Copy link: the whole timetable is encoded after the # in the address. By the URI rules in RFC 3986, the part after # is separated before a request is made and read only by the browser. A timetable opened from a link is not saved until you edit it. After your first edit it is saved in this browser's timetable slot, and the timetable that was there is kept for 7 days and can be reopened with “Open my saved timetable”.
• Autosave: your edits are saved in this browser right away. Clearing site data, or closing a private window, can erase them, so keep an important timetable as a file or link too.

Common mistakes

• Lunch is off by one period. If lunch comes after Period 4 but you set it after Period 5, every start time from Period 5 on shifts. Check that Period 5 starts when your school says it does.
• Reducing the number of periods, then adding one back. Going from 7 periods to 6 deletes the Period 7 cells. If you cut one by mistake, press Undo before you raise the number again.
• Overlapping events in time layout. Only one event fits at the same time on the same day. If you try to overlap, the tool names the event in the way and does not add yours. A class that ends at 10:15 and another that starts at 10:15 do not overlap.
• Switching to periods and losing events. After-school practices fall outside the periods and are dropped. To keep them on the same page, build the timetable in time layout.
• Painting with the eraser on. While the eraser is selected, clicking a cell empties it. Click a subject chip to get the brush back.

Limits

• This is not your school's official schedule. Check class times and period numbers against your school's bell schedule or your course registration.
• It handles weekly repeating items only. A snow day, a late start, a make-up class or an exam on a particular date cannot be added, so note those on a calendar.
• In period layout a cell holds one subject. In time layout only one event fits at a time. There is no way to compare two overlapping classes.
• You can create up to 30 subjects, and cells and events together can total up to 240.
• It does not send reminders. If you need an alert, add the item to your phone's alarm or calendar as well.
• The link gets longer as you add cells. Some messaging apps cut long links, so keep the PNG or PDF too.

Checked on 2026-10-22: the NCES Schools and Staffing Survey 2007–08 table, the Department for Education page on the length of the school week, RFC 3986 section 3.5 and the MDN localStorage page. Class lengths in the templates are examples, not rules.

Sources

• 01NCES: Average number of hours in the school day and average number of days in the school year for public schools, by state, 2007–08 Schools and Staffing SurveyUnited States average: 6.64 hours a day and 180 days a year; state averages from 6.22 to 7.17 hours
• 02GOV.UK, Department for Education: Length of the school weekEngland: state-funded mainstream schools are expected to deliver a school week of at least 32.5 hours by September 2024 at the latest
• 03RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier, section 3.5 FragmentThe fragment is separated from the URI before a request and is dereferenced solely by the user agent
• 04MDN: Window.localStorageData kept in the browser, and cleared when the last private tab closes in a private browsing session

Frequently asked questions

Tools to use alongside