Screen Soft Light / Timekeeping / POMODORO TIMER

Focus

25:00

Focus 1 of 4 · 0 finished

Space starts or pauses, S skips, R resets, F goes fullscreen.

No. 001 · POMODORO TIMER

Pomodoro timer — focus, break, repeat, with a screen you can read from across the desk

  • 01 Focus, short and long break lengths you set
  • 02 Long break after every fourth session
  • 03 Cool light to work, warm light to rest

Work in focused sessions with short breaks between them. The defaults are 25 minutes of focus, a 5 minute break and a 15 minute break after every fourth session, and you can change all three. The screen is a cool white while you work and turns warm amber when it is time to rest.

Other routine timers —
Meditation timerNap timer
§ 01

The method in one paragraph

The pomodoro technique was devised by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s and named after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. You pick one task, work on it for a fixed block (traditionally 25 minutes), take a short break, and after four blocks take a longer one. The timer does one job: it ends each block for you, so you are not checking the clock while you work.

§ 02

During focus the screen is a cool white of around 5000K, close to daylight.

Light that tells you which phase you are in

During focus the screen is a cool white of around 5000K, close to daylight. During breaks it changes to a warm amber of around 2700K. The change is visible from the edge of your vision, so you can see whether you are meant to be working or resting without reading the label. Untick Color light for a plain dark screen.

§ 03

What Skip and the automatic start do

Skip moves straight to the next phase; if you skip a focus session it is not counted as finished. With Start the next phase automatically ticked, each phase begins the moment the last one ends. Untick it and the timer stops after the chime and waits for you to press Start, which suits breaks you want to begin on your own terms.

§ 04

The numbers are yours to change

Twenty-five minutes suits some tasks and not others. Writing or study might run 50 minutes with a 10 minute break; email triage might want 15. The long break after every fourth session is fixed, but the length of each of the three phases is up to you, from 1 minute up to 180 for focus, 60 for a short break and 120 for a long break.

Procedure

Three moves to peak output

  1. 01

    Set your lengths

    Type minutes for focus, short break and long break. They lock once the timer starts and unlock again on Reset.

  2. 02

    Start the first focus

    Press Start focus or Space. A chime marks each change between work and rest if Chime between phases is ticked.

  3. 03

    Follow the dots

    Four dots show where you are in the set of four. Skip jumps to the next phase when you finish early or need to stop a break.

Inquiries

Questions worth asking

Q.01 How long is a pomodoro?
Traditionally 25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break, with a 15 to 30 minute break after four pomodoros. Here the defaults are 25, 5 and 15 minutes. Change any of them in the length fields before you start.
Q.02 What happens when a phase ends?
A two-note chime plays, falling for a break and rising for focus, and the screen changes color. If Start the next phase automatically is ticked, the next phase is already counting. If not, the timer waits for you.
Q.03 Does skipping a session count it?
No. The finished counter only goes up when a focus session runs all the way to zero. Skipping a focus session moves you on to the break but leaves the counter where it was.
Q.04 Can I change the lengths in the middle of a session?
Not while the timer is running or paused, so the numbers on screen always match the session you are in. Press Reset, change the lengths, and start again.
Q.05 Will the screen stay on while the timer runs?
Browsers that support the Screen Wake Lock API (Chrome, Edge and recent Safari) keep the screen awake while the timer is running. On other devices, turn off auto-lock or the screen saver first. Timing comes from the device clock, so a throttled background tab still finishes on time.
Cross-reference

Try adjacent plates