Do a barrel roll

Click the frame and press Z for one turn or R for two, the button prompt the phrase comes from. The counter keeps a running total across every spin you trigger.

What Is Do a Barrel Roll?

The page turns a full circle and lands upright again. It takes about a second, the text stays readable most of the way round, and it happens once per search. Typing z or r twice does exactly the same thing, since both phrases come from the same source.

The line is a quote from a 1997 space combat game, where a rabbit shouts it at you during a dogfight. It became an internet stock phrase years before it became a search trick.

How the Barrel Roll Started

Google shipped it in November 2011 as a demonstration of what browsers had just learned to do with rotation. One rule applied to the results container was enough, and because it costs nothing to run, it was never retired the way the seasonal features were.

That makes it the easiest trick in the collection to verify yourself, along with google askew, which is its quieter cousin from the same batch.

How to Use Do a Barrel Roll

• Search the phrase and the page spins as the results load.
• Try z or r twice for the same effect under its original name.
• Use the multiplier buttons for do a barrel roll 2 times, x5, x10 or x20 without retyping.
• Press x100 for a long continuous spin, and stop spinning to cut it short.
• Press Z or R with the frame focused if you would rather use the keyboard.

Search itself always gives you exactly one turn. Every request people type for do a barrel roll 100 times, do a barrel roll 1000 times or the very long number strings gets the same single rotation, which is the joke: the number never matters. Here it does, because the buttons loop the animation for real.

FAQs

Why does nothing happen when I search it?

Check you are searching rather than using an address bar shortcut to another engine, and check that reduced motion is switched off in your system settings, since that suppresses the animation.

Is do a barrel roll 20 times different from do a barrel roll twice?

Not in search. Both give one spin. The multipliers above are the only way to get the repeat count you asked for.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The rotation is handled by the browser, so it behaves the same on a small screen.

What pairs well with it?

Run it before google gravity for a spin that ends in a collapse. The rest of the set is listed with the other google easter eggs.