Timers on Indian rummy tables will score a silent player, and the score is whatever that client configured. Some clients treat a timeout as a drop. Others treat it as a missed turn and deal you a penalty short of a drop, or they auto-discard and leave you in the hand. Those outcomes are not the same as choosing a first drop, which on a common points sheet is 20. A timeout can be 20, 40, or a lost turn that still leaves an 80-point full count waiting if you later show a bad hand. You do not get to call it a first drop after the clock has already fired.
The client picks drop or a missed turn
The difference shows up on the first three turns. A player who looks at a dead hand and presses first drop accepts 20 on the common sheet and leaves. A player who waits, hoping the timer is a free pause, may be scored as a middle drop at 40 once the opening turns have passed, or may be kept in the deal with a random discard. Know which the client does before you rely on the clock as a substitute for the button. The help text or the table rules panel is the place that sentence is written. A friend’s description of another app is not.
Twenty points only if you chose them
Practice the gesture on a low-stakes table: open the rules, find the timeout line, and write down drop or missed turn. During the deal, decide while the timer still has time on it. If the hand has no path to a pure sequence, press the drop that matches the phase you are in. Letting the bar expire is a different instruction to the software. Two timeouts in one session are enough to show whether you have been paying 20 on purpose or paying whatever the client invented for silence.