Pomodoro Timer

The Pomodoro Technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, divides work into focused 25-minute intervals (pomodoros) followed by 5-minute short breaks. After four pomodoros, you take a 15–30 minute long break. This timer implements the full cycle: it counts down work sessions, automatically transitions to break periods, tracks your completed pomodoros, and plays an audio alert at each transition using the Web Audio API.

Yes. The settings panel lets you adjust the work session length (default 25 min), short break length (default 5 min), and long break length (default 15 min). You can also set how many pomodoros before a long break (default 4). Your settings are saved in localStorage and persist between sessions.

Yes. The timer uses the Web Notifications API to send a browser notification when a session ends, even if the tab is minimized or in the background. On first use, your browser will ask permission to send notifications. The timer also plays an audio tone via the Web Audio API regardless of tab visibility.

No. Like all browser-based timers, closing the tab stops the timer. Your completed session count is saved in localStorage, but the running countdown is not. For a timer that persists across tabs, you would need a native application. We recommend keeping the tab open in a dedicated browser window during your work sessions.

The technique works for several neuroscience-backed reasons: short, time-boxed tasks reduce procrastination by making work feel less overwhelming; mandatory breaks prevent cognitive fatigue and maintain sustained attention; the act of tracking completed pomodoros provides dopamine-driven motivation. Research suggests focused work intervals with scheduled breaks outperform continuous working for both quality and quantity of output.

Rest your BRAIN, not just your hands — the break only works if it's genuinely restorative, and scrolling your phone or checking email isn't. The point of the break is to let your prefrontal cortex recover from focused attention, so the best breaks are low-stimulation and ideally physical: stand up and stretch, walk to get water, look out a window (distance focus rests your eyes from the screen), do a few breaths, or just sit and let your mind wander. Avoid starting anything that captures attention — social media, news, a 'quick' email — because those don't rest the same systems you just taxed and tend to overrun the 5 minutes. The mental wandering during a true break is also when your brain consolidates what you just worked on and often surfaces solutions, so an unstructured break is a feature, not wasted time.

Yes, and you should tune it to your task and attention span. The classic 25-minutes-on / 5-off ratio is a starting point, not a rule. For DEEP, complex work (coding, writing, design) where it takes a while to get into flow, many people do better with longer focus blocks — 50/10 or 90/15 — so they're not interrupted just as they hit their stride. For draining or low-motivation tasks, SHORTER blocks (15/3) lower the barrier to starting. The mechanism that matters is: a time-boxed focus period followed by a real break, repeated, with a longer break every few cycles. This timer lets you customize all the intervals (focus length, short break, long break, and cycles before a long break), so adjust them until the rhythm matches how you actually concentrate.