The microwave that came with my house is the first time I’ve ever had a microwave that had perfectly working popcorn setting. It has never burnt a bag of microwave popcorn.
There are many buttons on my microwave. I have paid no attention to any of them but I know hitting the one at the bottom-right makes numbers go up by 30s per boop, while food go warm.
My microwave popcorn recipe is:
- Put in
- Boop liberally so you know it’s over 5 mins, probably 4–5 days
- When popcorn pops average about one every 3s, start counting to five
- If you reach five, serve
I see we share the same brain cell.
You should check out this video, it’s very eye-opening when it comes to how microwaves work (only linking to YouTube because I couldn’t find a decent Invidious source): https://youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0 (edit: https://materialious.nadeko.net/watch/UiS27feX8o0)
It depends on your model of microwave.
Personally, my wife and I intentionally deprived ourselves of a microwave in the house because we recognized that it makes us more prone to heavily processed foods (we’re not crazy “5G/microwaves give you cancer”people or whatever). We just recognized that we like eating whole foods and having one on hand makes it tempting to start buying a lot of garbage foods.


