Free tool · Focus and habits
Pomodoro timer
Work for 25 minutes, take a 5-minute break, and after four rounds take 15. Every length is adjustable, your settings stay on this device, and the time left shows in the tab title while the timer runs.
FocusRound 1 of 4
Keyboard: Space starts and pauses when the timer has focus; Tab moves to the buttons. The 25 and 5-minute defaults follow Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique, which he created in the 1980s.
Runs in your browser. Nothing you type or answer is sent anywhere.
How to use the timer
Press Start. The first focus block runs for 25 minutes. When it ends, the timer beeps twice and a 5-minute short break starts on its own. After the fourth focus block you get a 15-minute long break instead, and the cycle starts again.
- Pause stops the clock; Resume carries on from where you stopped.
- Reset goes back to the first focus block with the full time.
- Skip jumps to the next block without adding the current one to today’s count.
- With the timer selected, the Space key starts and pauses it.
Under Settings you can change the focus, short break and long break lengths, and how many focus blocks come before a long break. You can also turn off Start the next block on its own if you’d rather press Start after every break. Your settings are saved in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How the timer works
The timer doesn’t count seconds one by one. When you press Start it works out the clock time at which the block will end and keeps checking against that. Browsers slow down timers in tabs you aren’t looking at, so a countdown that counted ticks would drift; this one stays on time and catches up as soon as you look. While it runs, the time left appears in the tab title, so you can see it from another tab.
The beep is a short tone made in the browser with the Web Audio API, not a sound file: two beeps when a focus block ends and one when a break ends. Notifications stay off until you turn them on. Only then does your browser ask for permission. The count of focus blocks finished today is kept on this device and resets the next day.
With the default settings, one full cycle takes 130 minutes: 4 focus blocks of 25 minutes (100 minutes), 3 short breaks of 5 minutes (15 minutes) and 1 long break of 15 minutes.
Where the technique comes from
Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique in the 1980s, when he was struggling to focus on his university studies, and named it after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (“pomodoro” is Italian for tomato). On his official site he calls 25-minute sessions iconic but says they aren’t the technique itself. This timer only handles the timing. Pomodoro is a registered trademark, and this tool isn’t connected to Cirillo or his company.
Timed breaks in a 2023 study
The evidence is thin. The closest test we’ve found is a 2023 study by Biwer and colleagues at a Dutch university. On one day of real study, 87 bachelor’s and master’s students were split into three groups. One group took a 6-minute break after each 24-minute block, close to the classic Pomodoro pattern. Another took 3 minutes after each 12-minute block. The third decided for themselves when to take breaks.
The students who chose their own breaks studied in longer stretches and took longer breaks. They also reported more fatigue and distraction, and less concentration and motivation, than the fixed-break groups. All three groups got through the same amount of work and reported investing the same mental effort. The fixed schedules did it in less time. The authors word their conclusion cautiously and say that how effort changes over a session needs more research. It was one day, with one group of university students, and most outcomes were the students’ own ratings.
The study compared break schedules. It didn’t test whether attention fades after a set number of minutes, and we haven’t found good evidence that it does at 25. Treat the default as a starting point.
Choosing your lengths
Biwer’s two fixed schedules used quite different lengths (24 and 6 minutes, 12 and 3), and the study’s comparison was fixed breaks against self-chosen ones, not one length against another. Nothing in it picks a best length for you. If you lose the thread of hard work when the beep goes, try a longer focus block; if you find yourself checking your phone before the block ends, try a shorter one. The timer accepts focus blocks of 1 to 120 minutes, breaks of 1 to 60 minutes, and a long break after 1 to 12 focus blocks.
Using the break
What you do in a break is up to you: stand up, refill a glass, look out of a window. If you’d rather read something short, a Scroll lesson takes about a minute with its question, so a 5-minute break fits a few of them with time to spare. The free plan includes 5 lessons a day.
For a study session built around reviews rather than time, the spaced repetition schedule works out when to come back to something.
What the timer doesn’t tell you
The timer counts time. It can’t tell whether you were focused, and a number of finished blocks says nothing about how well the work went. It isn’t a treatment for anything. The block count is stored only in this browser, so clearing your site data or switching devices starts it again.
Pomodoro timer: common questions
What is the Pomodoro Technique?
It's a time-management method that Francesco Cirillo created in the 1980s, when he was struggling to focus on his university studies. You work in timed blocks with short breaks between them. It's named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used, and it's best known for 25-minute blocks.
Does the Pomodoro Technique work?
There's little direct research. In a 2023 study by Biwer and colleagues, 87 university students studied for a day with either fixed breaks (6 minutes after every 24, or 3 after every 12) or breaks they chose themselves. The fixed-break groups reported less fatigue and distraction and finished the same amount of work in less time. One day with one group of students is a small base.
Does the Pomodoro Technique work for ADHD?
We haven't found a study that tested it with people who have ADHD, so we can't say. A timer is a way to structure time, not a treatment. If ADHD affects your work or study, a doctor or psychologist can go through the options with you.
Why 25 minutes?
It's the length Cirillo's technique made famous, so the timer starts there. His own site calls 25-minute sessions iconic, and also says they aren't the technique. If 25 minutes is too short for the work you do, change Focus to a length you can keep going for.
Does the timer keep running in a background tab?
Yes. It counts down to a fixed end time and shows the time left in the tab title. Browsers slow down timers in background tabs, so the beep or notification can arrive a little late there. With Start the next block on its own turned on, the next block is still timed from the moment the last one ended.
Related tools
- Attention span testA four-minute focus check: press for every number except 3, and see where you slip.
- Habit formation calculatorWhen a new daily habit is likely to feel automatic, based on the research.
- Spaced repetition scheduleWhen to review something so you remember it by a date, with a calendar file.
Guides
- How to improve attention span, according to the researchThe popular 8-second figure has no research behind it. What Gloria Mark's 47 seconds measures, what short-video studies found, and changes worth testing.
- How to remember what you readRecall a chapter before you reread it, write one sentence from memory and review it days later. What the reading research supports, and why highlighting rates low.