Pomodoro Timer
Free online timer with breaks, tasks, and stats. No ads, no account.
Intervals
Alarm
Keeps playing while you switch tabs.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Space
- Start or pause
- R
- Reset the current session
- S
- Skip to the next interval
- F
- Full screen
- T
- Switch light and dark
No tasks yet. Add the one thing you are doing.
- Today
- 0 min
- This week
- 0 min
- All time
- 0 min
- Sessions today
- 0
- Streak
- 0 days
This is a free pomodoro timer you run in your browser. The default cycle is 25 minutes of focus and a 5-minute break. Press start, work until the alarm, then take the break. There is no account, no ads, and nothing to install. Your tasks, settings, and history stay in your browser.
What a pomodoro actually is
Francesco Cirillo came up with the method in the late 1980s, while he was a university student who could not get through a chapter without drifting. He grabbed a tomato-shaped kitchen timer off the counter and gave himself a short, finishable stretch of study. Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. That is the whole origin story.
The working core: pick one task, work for 25 minutes without switching, take 5 minutes off, repeat. After four rounds, take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes. Four sessions like that run 1 hour 55 minutes from start to finish.
There is more structure in the full method, including how you record interruptions and estimate work. The pomodoro technique page covers it.
How to use this timer
1. Set your lengths, or leave them alone. The timer opens at 25 / 5 / 15 with a long break after every fourth focus session. Open the settings and type new numbers if you want something else. Anything from 1 to 180 minutes works. The common mistake here is ambition: people set a 60-minute focus block on Monday and have quit the habit by Wednesday. Pick a length you could do twice in a row on a bad day.
2. Write down the one thing you are doing. Add it to the task list and give it an estimate in pomodoros. “Work on thesis” will sit there for a month. “Draft the intro to section 2” gets checked off before lunch. The current task shows above the ring so you can see what you agreed to do.
3. Press Start, then actually stop when it rings. The ring drains, the browser tab counts down, and a line under the ring tells you what clock time the session ends at. When the alarm goes, take the break. Skipping breaks to ride momentum is the most common way people burn out of this method by week two. If you need something to do with five minutes, there are break ideas that are not your phone.
What the settings do
Focus, short break, long break
Three numbers, each editable, each in minutes. The tabs at the top of the timer let you jump straight into a mode without waiting for the cycle to bring you there.
Long break every N sessions
Four is the classic number. Set it to 2 if you are running long focus blocks, or 6 if you are running 15-minute ones. The counter resets when you take the long break.
Auto-start
Two separate toggles: auto-start breaks, and auto-start the next focus session. Breaks auto-start by default, because the moment you have to click something to begin a break is the moment you decide not to take one. Focus does not auto-start by default, so a break never quietly turns into work.
Alarm sound, volume, repeats
Four sounds, all generated by your browser rather than downloaded: bell, chime, digital, and soft. There is a volume slider, a test button, and a repeat count from 1 to 5 for people who leave the room. A separate toggle plays a quiet tick during focus if you like the pressure.
Notifications and the tab title
Turn on browser notifications and your browser will ask permission once. After that you get a desktop notification when a session ends, which matters if the timer is buried behind six other tabs. The tab title counts down either way, so a glance at the tab strip tells you how long is left, and the favicon changes color between focus and break.
Ambient sound
Brown noise, white noise, rain, and a ticking clock, with their own volume control. They are synthesized in the browser, so nothing downloads and nothing buffers. The pomodoro timer with music page explains what each one suits and how to run your own playlist alongside it.
Tasks, and estimating in pomodoros
The task list holds what you plan to do, in order, with an estimate of how many pomodoros each item needs. Completed pomodoros tick up against the estimate as you go.
The estimate is the useful part. Guess two, spend five, and you have learned something concrete about your own work that no productivity article can tell you. Most people are badly wrong in the same direction for months before it corrects. Drag to reorder, edit in place, delete what you are not going to do.
Stats and streaks, without an account
Most timers that track your history want you to sign up first, and several charge for it. This one counts your focus minutes for today, this week, and all time, plus sessions finished, your current daily streak, and a bar chart of the last seven days.
All of it is computed from records in your own browser. There is a clear-history button when you want a fresh start. Nothing is uploaded to an account, because there is no account. See the privacy page for the full detail of what lives where.
Send a setup to someone with a link
Every setting is readable from the URL, so a specific configuration is just a link you can paste into a message or a bookmark bar. Click “copy link to these settings” and you get a URL that opens the timer already configured.
A few worth trying:
- Classic 25/5 for general work and study
- 50/10 for deep work or long reading
- The 52/17 pattern from DeskTime’s data
- 90-minute blocks for writing and coding
The custom timer page goes further into building your own ratio, and pomodoro intervals compares the common ones side by side.
Fullscreen and quieter variants
Press F and the timer fills the screen with digits big enough to read from across a classroom. Esc gets you out. The full screen timer page is set up for that directly.
There is also a calmer palette on the aesthetic pomodoro timer, a 50/10 default on the study timer, and a count-up stopwatch for when you want to measure instead of limit. Fixed-length countdowns for everything from a 5-minute break to a two-hour exam sit on the timers page.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Space | Start or pause |
| R | Reset the current session |
| S | Skip to the next interval |
| F | Fullscreen |
| T | Switch between light and dark |
Why 25 minutes
Cirillo picked it because it was short enough to start without dread and long enough to get somewhere. It is not a finding from a sleep lab, and no biological clock ticks in 25-minute units.
What matters more than the number is that the length is fixed in advance and short enough that stopping feels survivable. Plenty of people do better at 45 or 50. Plenty of people with ADHD do better at 10 or 15. Why 25 minutes digs into the history, and how long is a pomodoro covers what to do when the number does not fit you.
It works offline
The timer is a small static page with no server calls once it has loaded. Install it from your browser’s address bar and it opens like an app, on a plane, on hotel wifi, wherever. Refresh mid-session and the countdown picks up where it was, because the timer stores a deadline rather than counting ticks.
No ads, no login, and what that means
Five of the nine best-known pomodoro sites run ads, and several put session history behind a paid account. Both of those things are free here.
What it does not mean is that nothing is measured. Google Analytics records aggregate traffic so I can see which pages people actually use. What never leaves your device is the content of your work: your task names, your settings, and your session history all live in your browser’s local storage. The about page explains who runs this and why.
FAQ
Is this pomodoro timer free?
Yes, entirely. No ads, no paid tier, no account, and no feature held back for a premium version. The stats, streaks, task list, ambient sounds, and shareable presets are all included. It is a static website with almost no running costs, which is what makes giving it away practical.
Do I need to create an account?
No. There is no sign-up form anywhere on the site. Your settings, tasks, and session history are saved in your browser’s local storage, which means they persist between visits on that device and that browser, but they do not follow you to a different computer or a private window.
Does the timer keep accurate time in a background tab?
Yes. Browsers throttle background tabs, so any timer that counts ticks will drift badly. This one stores the finishing time and compares it against the clock, then re-checks the moment you return to the tab. A 25-minute session you left running in a background tab still ends at 25 minutes.
What happens if I refresh or close the tab?
A running session is saved as you go, so a refresh resumes the countdown where it was instead of starting over. Close the tab entirely and come back later, and the timer will reflect the time that actually passed. Your task list and history survive both.
Can I change the 25-minute default?
Any focus length from 1 to 180 minutes works, and break lengths are equally flexible. Type the numbers into the settings and they are remembered for next time. To start from a known pattern instead, the custom timer page has ready-made ratios you can open with one click.
How many pomodoros should I do in a day?
Most people who use this seriously land between 6 and 12 focus sessions on a working day, which is 3 to 5 hours of concentrated effort. That is a lot more than it sounds. How many pomodoros per day walks through building up to a realistic number without wrecking your evenings.
What do I do when someone interrupts me mid-session?
Cirillo’s own answer: write the interruption down on a list, say you will get back to them, and keep the timer running. If it genuinely cannot wait, stop the timer and reset. A pomodoro that got half-done does not count, which sounds harsh but is what makes the count mean anything.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, it is built mobile-first and the ring scales to the screen. One caveat worth knowing: phone browsers suspend tabs aggressively and may not fire the alarm sound if the screen is locked. On a phone, notifications and the visible countdown are more reliable than audio.
Where is my data stored?
In your browser, using local storage, on the device you are sitting at. Settings, task list, and the record of each finished session all live there and are never sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data clears them too. Full details are on the privacy page.
Is this good for ADHD?
Many people with ADHD find timed blocks helpful, often with shorter focus periods than 25 minutes and a visible countdown that keeps time concrete. It is not treatment and this is not medical advice. The pomodoro timer for ADHD page covers the adjustments people report making.