Do a Barrel Roll 2 Times: Google’s Spin Trick and How to Make It Happen Twice

You typed “do a barrel roll 2 times” into a search bar, so you probably already know the basic joke. Type “do a barrel roll” into Google, and the whole results page tumbles through a full 360-degree spin before settling back down. It is silly, it is harmless, and it has been making people grin since 2011.

But you want it twice. Fair enough. Once feels like a tease.

Here is the honest short version: Google’s official trick is a single roll. Whether a “2 times” variation triggers a second spin on your device depends on your browser, your region and whatever Google happens to be serving that week, and published reports disagree about it. The good news is that you do not need Google’s permission to spin a page twice. This guide shows you every working route, from the quickest one-click methods to a three-line code snippet that rolls any page two full times.

Along the way, we will cover where the phrase actually comes from (a spaceship-flying rabbit, not a search engine), how the effect works under the hood, what a real barrel roll looks like in an aircraft, and why so many people still search for this nearly fifteen years later.

Quick Answer: How to Do a Barrel Roll 2 Times

To do a barrel roll 2 times, search for do a barrel roll 2 times on Google in a desktop browser. Reports describe Google’s built-in trick as a single 360-degree spin. If your page spins once, repeat the search or run a short animation that rotates the page 720 degrees.

If you just want the spin, here is the fastest path:

1. Open Google in a desktop browser such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
2. Type do a barrel roll 2 times into the search box and press Enter.
3. Watch the results page. If it spins twice, you are done.
4. If it only spins once, type do a barrel roll again (or refresh the results) and let it spin a second time.
5. For a guaranteed double spin on any page, run the short code snippet in the “Copy-and-Paste Code” section below.

That is the whole thing. The rest of this article explains why each step behaves the way it does, so you can fix it when it doesn’t.

Do a Barrel Roll Twice, 3, 5, 10 or 20 Times

People type the same idea in many ways. “Do a barrel roll twice,” “do a barrel roll x2,” and “do a barrel roll 2 times” all mean two full spins. The same goes for “do a barrel roll 3 times,” “do a barrel roll 5 times,” and “do a barrel roll x5.”

Shorthand is just as common. Searchers try “do a barrel roll 10 times,” “do a barrel roll 10x,” “do a barrel roll x10,” and “do a barrel roll 10.” Others go for “do a barrel roll 20 times,” “do a barrel roll 20x,” “do a barrel roll x20,” “do a barrel roll 20,” or even “do 20 barrel rolls.”

What you type	What you want	Degrees of rotation	Best method
do a barrel roll twice, x2, 2 times	Two full spins	720	Repeat the search or use CSS
do a barrel roll 3 times, 5 times, x5	Three to five spins	1,080 to 1,800	CSS code
do a barrel roll 10 times, 10x, x10, 10	Ten spins	3,600	CSS code or a fan tool
do a barrel roll 20 times, 20x, x20, 20, do 20 barrel rolls	Twenty spins	7,200	CSS code or a fan tool

The math is simple. Multiply the number of rolls by 360. Two rolls equal 720 degrees. Ten rolls equal 3,600.

Reports describe Google’s trick as a single roll. Whether a number such as “do a barrel roll 10” does anything extra depends on your device. Treat these as search habits, not guaranteed commands.

100, 200, 1000 and Bigger Barrel Roll Counts

Some people want far more than a handful. They search “do a barrel roll 100 times,” “do a barrel roll 100,” “do a barrel roll x200,” “do a barrel roll 200 times,” and “do a barrel roll 1000 times.” A few try “do a barrel roll 99999 times.” Others paste a number with dozens of zeros, such as “do a barrel roll 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times,” to see what breaks.

One popular variation is “do a barrel roll 67 times” or just “do a barrel roll 67,” which rides a viral number joke.

Here is the honest part. Google does not document any of these counts. A page that really spun 99999 times would run for hours. Your browser would also hit limits long before the end. Fan-made tools and custom code fake big counts by speeding the animation up.

If you build your own, the math stays the same. A hundred rolls equal 36,000 degrees. A thousand rolls equal 360,000 degrees. Keep the duration reasonable so nobody feels sick. Giant numbers also make a quick stress test for any tool you try.

What “Do a Barrel Roll” Actually Means

The phrase has three lives, and people searching for it usually mean one of them.

The video game line. In the 1997 Nintendo 64 shooter Star Fox 64, a character shouts “Do a barrel roll!” at the player. It became one of the most quoted lines in gaming.

The Google Easter egg. Search for it and the page spins. That’s the version most people are after when they add “2 times” or “x2” to the end.

The aerobatic maneuver. In real flying, a barrel roll is a corkscrew-shaped turn where the aircraft rolls around its own axis while also travelling in a curved path. It looks easy in games and is far trickier in a cockpit.

When someone says “do a barrel roll 2 times,” they almost always mean the Google effect, repeated. Occasionally they mean the in-game move done twice in a row. We will cover both.

If you are brand new and only want to know how to do a barrel roll, the answer is one search. Open Google, type, do a barrel roll, and press Enter. People also type “google do a barrel roll,” “google barrel roll,” “do barrel roll,” “barrel roll,” or “barrelroll” as one word. They all point to the same trick. “Do a spin” is another casual way people ask for it.

The Star Fox 64 Origin Story

To understand why a search engine spins its page for you, you have to go back to 1997.

Star Fox 64 is a rail shooter for the Nintendo 64. You play Fox McCloud, the leader of a team of anthropomorphic pilots, flying an Arwing fighter through the Lylat system. Your wingmates include Falco Lombardi, Slippy Toad and an older, wiser pilot named Peppy Hare. Peppy is the one who keeps telling you to “do a barrel roll.”

The line stuck because it was useful. In the game, a barrel roll isn’t just a flourish. It lets your ship deflect incoming enemy fire, so the voice in your headset is giving you actual survival advice. Players learned to hear it, obey it and eventually joke about it.

The input was simple, too. You double-tap the Z or R button on the Nintendo 64 controller. That is why the Google trick also responds to the search phrase “Z or R twice.” Same maneuver, different entrance.

By the time social media took off, “do a barrel roll” had become a meme: a friendly nudge you could aim at anyone who looked stuck. Peppy’s advice ended up as shorthand for “when in trouble, spin.”

Z or R Twice, Z Twice and Other Variations

The best-known alternate trigger is “z or r twice.” It copies the Nintendo 64 button press. People also search “z twice,” “z or r,” “z or r twice 10 times,” and “do a barrel roll zz.”

These all describe the same idea. You double-tap the roll button. Only “z or r twice” is widely reported as a Google trigger, so read the others as search habits. If one fails, fall back to the standard phrase, do a barrel roll. For a repeat effect, run the phrase again or use the code later in this guide.

How Google’s Barrel Roll Trick Works

When the Easter egg appeared in November 2011, tech sites noticed almost immediately. Mashable reported at the time that a Google spokesperson said the query was built by a Google software engineer mainly to entertain people, while showing off what CSS3 could do in modern browsers. The same statement said it would stay in place for a while. It has outlasted most predictions.

That explanation tells you everything about the technique. The effect is not a video or a trick of your screen. It’s an ordinary web animation applied to the page itself.

Google has not published its code, so this is the general idea. Your browser likely does the following:

• Google’s page detects the exact search phrase.
• It applies an animation to the results container.
• The animation uses a CSS transform to rotate the element from 0 degrees to 360 degrees over a few seconds.
• When the animation ends, the element returns to its normal position and nothing is changed or stored.

A rotation repeats easily. Rotate to 720 degrees and you have a double roll. Rotate to 1080 and you have three. That’s the entire idea behind the “2 times” version, and it is why developers have been recreating the effect on their own sites for years.

The original also taught a lot of people a quiet lesson: CSS animation had grown up. In 2011, getting a whole page to rotate smoothly in the browser, with no plugin, was a showpiece. Today it is a few lines of code.

Does Google Really Support “2 Times”?

This is the part where a lot of articles get vague or quietly overpromise, so let’s be straightforward.

No official Google documentation describes a way to multiply the barrel roll, at least none we could find. Third-party pages about the trick disagree with each other. Some say that adding a number, such as “do a barrel roll 2 times” or “do a barrel roll 10 times,” can trigger repeated spins on some browsers or experimental pages. Others say that Google only ever spins once no matter what number you add, and that any repeat comes from extensions or custom tools.

Both things can be true at different moments. Google tests, tweaks and retires Easter eggs without announcement. Results vary by device, browser and language. So the practical advice is:

• Try the exact phrase yourself. It costs you five seconds.
• If it spins once, don’t assume you did something wrong.
• Use one of the reliable methods below when you want a guaranteed second roll.

That approach also protects you from sites that claim a secret multiplier. Test, then decide.

Five Ways to Get Two Barrel Rolls

Each method below has a different trade-off between speed, reliability and fun. Pick the one that fits.

Method 1: Search the exact phrase

Go to Google and type do a barrel roll 2 times. Press Enter. If your device supports the multi-spin version, the page rotates twice. If not, you get the standard single roll, which is still a perfectly fine way to spend a few seconds.

Best for: instant curiosity.

Method 2: Run the single roll twice

Spin once with “do a barrel roll.” When the animation finishes, run the search again or refresh the results page. Two searches, two spins. It is not elegant, but it works every time the base trick works.

Best for: people who only want to say they did it twice.

Method 3: Use the “Z or R twice” phrase

Type z or r twice into the search bar. This phrase points to the same Easter egg, thanks to the Star Fox 64 control scheme. Because it’s an alternate trigger, it is useful when one phrase misbehaves on your browser. Run it back-to-back with the first phrase and you have your two rolls.

Best for: gamers who want the nostalgia hit.

Method 4: Use a third party barrel roll tool

A number of fan-made sites exist purely to repeat the effect, sometimes offering two, ten or even hundreds of rotations. They typically rebuild the spin with the same CSS or JavaScript idea described above. A few cautions apply:

• Stick to simple, well-known pages and skip any site that asks you to install something.
• Never enter personal information to “unlock” a spin.
• Be wary of browser extensions you don’t recognize. A harmless-looking novelty extension can ask for far more permission than a spin animation needs.

Best for: bigger numbers, such as ten or twenty spins, when the novelty is the point.

Method 5: Build it yourself

This is the most reliable method, and surprisingly, the easiest to understand once you’ve seen it. The next section gives you the code.

Best for: guaranteed double spins and learning how it works.

Copy and Paste Code for a Double Barrel Roll

If you own a web page, or you are just experimenting, you can make any element roll twice with a few lines of CSS.

The CSS version

@keyframes double-roll {

  from { transform: rotate(0deg); }

  to   { transform: rotate(720deg); }

}

.barrel-roll-twice {

  animation: double-roll 4s ease-in-out;

}

Add the class barrel-roll-twice to any element, such as your <body>, and it spins two full turns over four seconds. Change 720deg to 360deg for one roll, or 1080deg for three. Change 4s to make it faster or slower.

The JavaScript version (Web Animations API)

document.body.animate(

  [{ transform: ‘rotate(0deg)’ }, { transform: ‘rotate(720deg)’ }],

  { duration: 4000, easing: ‘ease-in-out’ }

);

That one line of logic does the same job without touching your stylesheet. You can attach it to a button’s click event so visitors can trigger the roll themselves.

A safety note about pasting code into your browser console

You may see advice online telling you to paste snippets into the developer console while on Google. The snippet above is harmless, but the habit isn’t. Pasting code you do not understand into a console is a well-known way scammers take over accounts. Only run code you’ve read and understood, and never run something just because a stranger said it was a “hack.”

One accessibility improvement worth adding

If you put this on a real website, respect visitors who have asked their system to reduce motion:

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {

  .barrel-roll-twice { animation: none; }

}

It’s a small touch that shows you built the effect considerately.

Why the Barrel Roll Isn’t Working for You

If nothing happened when you searched, the cause is usually one of these.

You’re on a browser or app that doesn’t render the animation. The effect relies on modern CSS animation. Older browsers, stripped-down in-app browsers and some embedded views may ignore it. Try a current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.

You’re on the phone. Mobile results can behave differently from desktop. If you are in the Google app, switch to a mobile browser and try again.

Your language or region setting is different. The trigger phrase is English. If your search language is set to something else, try switching to English, or search for “z or r twice” instead.

An extension is interfering. Ad blockers, script blockers and privacy tools sometimes block page scripts. Try a private or incognito window with extensions disabled.

You typed a variation Google doesn’t recognize. Small wording changes can stop the trigger. Check the misspellings section below, then try the plain phrase first.

Your system is set to reduce motion. Both operating systems and browsers can reduce animation on request. If you’ve switched that on for comfort, some animations will not play.

The Easter egg has changed. Google can adjust Easter eggs at any time. If every phrase fails, the trick may simply be behaving differently on your account right now. In that case, Method 5 is your friend.

A quick troubleshooting order that saves time: try the plain phrase, try “z or r twice,” try an incognito window, try a different browser, then build the roll yourself.

Misspellings That Still Lead Here

Typos happen fast, especially on a phone. People search “do a barell roll,” “do a barrell roll,” “barrell roll,” “do a barrel roll,” “do a barrel roll,” “do a barral roll,” “do a barrel rool,” and “barrel role.”

Google usually works out what you meant and corrects the results. The Easter egg trigger may still need the right spelling. If nothing spins, retype it as a barrel roll and try again. Check the phrase before you press Enter.

Real Barrel Roll vs. Aileron Roll in Aviation

Since the phrase is borrowed from flying, it is worth knowing what pilots mean by it. The classic confusion is between a barrel roll and an aileron roll.

An aileron roll is a rotation around the aircraft’s long axis, nose to tail. The plane’s nose stays roughly pointed at the same spot on the horizon while the wings go over and back around. Pilots often describe it as the cleaner, simpler roll. This is the one most people picture, and it is the one closest to what the game and the Google page do.

A true barrel roll is a more complicated, corkscrew-shaped maneuver. The aircraft rolls while also moving in a helical path around an imaginary point, so the flight path traces the outline of a barrel. Because it involves loading and unloading the airframe in a curved path, it needs more skill and more careful control than a straight roll.

In short, the screen spin is closer to an aileron roll than a barrel roll in the strict sense. Nobody minds. “Do an aileron roll” has never made a good meme.

A few practical truths about real aerobatics, for anyone feeling inspired:

• Trained pilots fly aerobatic maneuvers, often in aircraft built for them.
• Rolling a large passenger aircraft is far outside normal operations, despite what the internet might suggest.
• If you really want to feel a barrel roll, aerobatic flight schools offer introductory flights with an instructor in control.

Barrel Rolls in Other Games and Pop Culture

Star Fox 64 may have made the phrase famous, but the barrel roll is now a universal piece of game design shorthand.

Flight and space combat games regularly include some form of roll, dodge or evasive spin. It gives the player a way to avoid damage, change direction quickly or just show off. Many players who never touched Star Fox know the line anyway, because it travelled through forums, video clips and social media long before the Google Easter egg existed.

More Google Tricks and Easter Eggs Worth Trying

If the barrel roll scratched an itch, Google has hidden plenty of similar surprises over the years. A few that people commonly mention:

• Askew. Searching “askew” tilts the results slightly, as though the page has been knocked crooked.
• Google Gravity. A well-known web experiment, often reached through the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, where page elements fall to the bottom of the screen.
• Z or R twice. The Star Fox-flavored shortcut mentioned above.
• Recursion. A classic wordplay joke where Google asks if you meant the same word you just typed.
• Atari Breakout. An image-search game that turns search thumbnails into bricks.

Availability changes over time, since Google adds and removes these without notice. Treat them as a scavenger hunt rather than a guarantee.

Searchers often group these under broad phrases like “google tricks” and “easter egg google.” Some mash two tricks into “google gravity roll.” Those are really two separate effects. One drops the page. The other spins it.

A few people type a stretched “gooooooooooooooogle” as a nod to the old results-page footer, where extra o’s marked more pages. It is a joke search, not a trigger.

Motion Sickness and Accessibility

A spinning screen is funny until it isn’t. Some people feel dizzy, queasy or disoriented when large parts of a screen move, and that matters.

A few friendly pointers:

• If you are sensitive to motion, skip the multi-roll versions or look away from the screen as it spins.
• Don’t send barrel roll links to someone without warning, particularly someone who uses a screen for work.
• If you add a barrel roll to your own website, keep it optional, short and easy to avoid, and honor the reduced motion setting shown earlier.
• Never trigger spinning automatically on page load. Visitors should always choose to start it.

FAQs

Final Thoughts

The whole story of “do a barrel roll 2 times” comes down to a surprisingly warm idea: people like being a little bit silly together. A rabbit in a 1997 game gave a pilot some advice. Players turned it into a joke. A Google engineer turned the joke into a page animation, and a few million people have typed it into a search box ever since.

If you want the quickest result, search the phrase and see what your device does. If it only spins once, use the repeat trick, try “z or r twice,” or add two lines of CSS to guarantee a double roll. Whichever way you go, keep the effect optional, keep it kind to people who get motion sick, and keep it fun.

Now go spin something. Twice.

Sources and Last Review

We last reviewed this guide on October 21, 2026. Google can change or retire Easter eggs at any time, so test each phrase on your own device.

• PCWorld, “Do a Barrel Roll Is Google’s Latest Loony Easter Egg” covers the 2011 launch, the Star Fox 64 link and the “Z or R twice” trigger.
• Mashable’s 2011 coverage, quoted by several blogs, carries the Google spokesperson statement about CSS3.
• Claims about repeat counts such as 10, 100 or 1000 rolls come from unofficial pages and stay unconfirmed.