Pomodoro Focus Timer

What is a Pomodoro timer?#

The Pomodoro Technique is a focus method from the late 1980s: work in short, uninterrupted sprints, then take a short break, and repeat — with a longer break after a few rounds. The name comes from the tomato-shaped kitchen timer its inventor used (“pomodoro” is Italian for tomato). The point is not the timer itself but the commitment it enforces: for 25 minutes you do one thing and do not switch tabs, and the ringing boundary protects that block from drift.

This page is a self-contained Pomodoro timer with the classic defaults — 25 minutes focus, 5 minutes short break, 15 minutes long break, long break after every 4 focus sessions — all of which you can change. It draws a progress ring that drains as the session elapses, chimes at each transition, optionally fires a desktop notification, and keeps a per-day count of completed focus sessions so you can see how many “pomodoros” you have done today.

How to use it#

1. Press Start. The ring begins draining and the big clock counts down from your focus length (25:00 by default). The label above the clock shows the current phase — Focus / Short break / Long break — and the round counter shows which work session you are on.
2. When a focus session ends, a chime plays and the timer automatically rolls into a break (short for the first three, long after the fourth). After each break it returns to focus.
3. Need to step away cleanly? Reset restarts the current phase from the top. Skip jumps straight to the next phase without counting the current one.
4. Tick Sound to hear the chime on each transition; tick Notifications to also get a desktop notification (your browser will ask permission once).
5. Tweak the config card below (focus / short break / long break lengths, and cycles before a long break). The new lengths apply to the next phase that starts.
6. The today’s tally line counts completed focus sessions for the current calendar day, kept in your browser’s local storage.

Key features#

• Classic defaults that work, fully editable — focus 1–180 min, breaks 1–180 min, cycles 1–12, all validated so a typo cannot produce a broken timer.
• Visual progress ring — a draining SVG circle gives a glanceable sense of how much of the session is left without reading the digits.
• Automatic phase rotation — focus → break → focus, with a long break landing every Nth work session. You never have to re-arm the timer between phases.
• Optional sound and desktop notifications, so you can leave the tab in the background and still know when a session ended.
• Per-day completed count, stored locally — your “pomodoros today” total persists across page reloads on the same browser.

Worked example#

You sit down to write a report. Leave the defaults (25 / 5 / 15 / 4) and press Start.

1. The ring begins at full, the clock reads 25:00, the label reads Focus, the round counter reads 1.
2. You write uninterrupted. At 25 minutes the chime sounds, the tally bumps to 1 pomodoro today, and the timer rolls into a 5-minute short break.
3. You stretch, and when the break ends the timer returns to Focus for round 2.
4. Rounds 2 and 3 play out the same way: focus → short break → focus. After you complete the 4th focus session, the next break is the 15-minute long break instead of the short one — the cycle counter has hit the threshold you configured.
5. By the end you have 4 pomodoros logged for today, roughly 100 minutes of real focused writing bracketed by intentional rest. Reload the page and the “4 pomodoros today” count is still there.

The whole 4-round cycle is about two hours: four 25-minute focus blocks plus two 5-minute breaks, one 15-minute long break, totalling roughly 130 minutes — a sustainable deep-work block that the timer structures for you.

FAQ#

Why 25 minutes?#

That is the original length Francesco Cirillo landed on with his tomato kitchen timer — long enough to get into real work, short enough that you commit fully rather than drift. It is a default, not a law. Many people work better at 50 minutes with a 10-minute break, or 15 minutes for a small task. Change the focus length in the config card and the whole cycle adapts.

Do my completed sessions sync across devices?#

No. The per-day tally is stored in your browser’s local storage, which is per-browser and per-device. If you switch machines, the count starts fresh on the new one. Nothing is sent to a server, which is the trade-off for keeping the tool fully local.

What is the “cycles before long break” setting?#

It is how many focus sessions you complete before earning a long break. The classic value is 4. Set it to 2 if you prefer more frequent long breaks, or 6 if you want longer uninterrupted stretches. After every Nth completed focus session, the next break is the long one instead of the short one.

Does the timer keep running if I close the tab?#

The countdown is driven by a live timer in the page, so it runs while the tab stays open. If you close or navigate away from the tab, the running session does not continue in the background. For a focus block you want to protect, keep the tab open in its own window — the progress ring and chime are designed to be left visible.