Pomodoro Timer

4 Minute Timer

Counts down 4 minutes, with optional breaks. Ends at … if you start now.

25:00

This is a four-minute countdown. One click starts it and an alarm sounds at zero. The finishing time is fixed the moment you press start and checked against your clock, so a background tab costs you nothing. There is nothing to install and no account to make.

Four minutes is an awkward number, which is why the things that use it chose it for a reason. The Tabata protocol is exactly four minutes: eight rounds of twenty seconds hard and ten seconds off, from Izumi Tabata's 1996 study on high-intensity intervals. A soft-boiled egg wants about four. A pour-over runs roughly that from the bloom to the last drip. It is also about the length of a song, which is the unit people already reach for when they want a break that ends by itself. None of those is a work session, and that is the point: four minutes is a round, not a block.

What fits in 4 minutes

  • A full Tabata round: eight sets of twenty seconds hard and ten seconds off
  • Soft-boiling an egg, where a minute either way decides what the yolk does
  • A pour-over from the bloom through to the last drip
  • One song, when you want a pause that ends on its own
  • Emptying the dishwasher or the drying rack, which is a four-minute job people put off for days

As a pomodoro

Not a pomodoro, and shorter than its break. Four minutes is a round rather than a session, and it is still a minute short of the standard break. Time the round here, then run the work itself on the 25 and 5 cycle.

Four 25-minute sessions with 5-minute breaks take 1 hour 55 minutes.

Open this as a pomodoro cycle

FAQ

Can I run a Tabata round on a plain four-minute countdown?

You can, with one caveat: a single countdown shows the total remaining, not the twenty-second and ten-second splits inside it. Start the four minutes, work the eight rounds off your own count, and treat the alarm as the finish line. If you want every interval called out loud, an app built for intervals will serve you better than a countdown.

Is a four-minute timer accurate to the second?

Yes. It stores the exact moment the four minutes end and compares that against your system clock, rather than counting ticks a throttled tab can slow down. Changing tabs, minimising the window or letting the display sleep makes no difference to when it rings. Closing the browser is the one thing that stops it.

What is four minutes actually good for?

Anything with a fixed shape that you would otherwise guess at: a Tabata round, an egg, a coffee, one song away from the desk. What it is not good for is work, because four minutes ends at roughly the point where you have finished deciding where to start. For that, twenty-five is the shorter end of useful.