This is a pomodoro timer with the settings panel already open. Set any focus length, short break, and long break from 1 to 180 minutes, choose how many sessions come before the long break, and press start. The setup is stored in the URL, so you can bookmark it or send it to someone.
How to build your own interval
- Type your focus minutes. This is the only number most people need to change. If 25 feels short, try 40. If 25 feels impossible, try 12. Nobody is checking.
- Set the two break lengths. The short break runs between focus sessions. The long break runs after a run of them. A short break under 3 minutes tends to get skipped, and one over 10 tends to turn into something else.
- Choose how often the long break happens. Four sessions is the classic spacing. With 50-minute blocks, two or three is usually enough.
- Copy the link. The button under the settings copies a URL that opens this exact setup. Paste it in your bookmarks, or send it to a study partner so you are both running the same clock.
Ratios worth stealing
Start a 25/5 session for the original. Short enough to begin when you are avoiding something, and four of them run 1 hour 55 minutes. More on the 25/5 pomodoro.
Start a 50/10 session when 25 minutes keeps cutting you off mid-thought. Reading, editing, and anything that takes ten minutes just to load into your head suits this better. See 50/10 pomodoro.
Start a 52/17 session if you want the pattern DeskTime pulled out of its own users’ activity logs in 2014. The break is longer than people expect, and that is the interesting part. More on the 52/17 rule.
Start a 90/20 session for one big piece of work per block. Two of these is a serious day of writing or coding. See 90-minute focus sessions.
Side by side comparisons of all of these live on the pomodoro intervals page.
How the shareable links work
Each setting becomes a parameter in the address bar. Open a link with those parameters and the timer configures itself before you see it, with no cookie or saved profile involved.
That makes a preset a plain piece of text you can keep anywhere: a note app, a class syllabus, a pinned message in a team chat, the bookmark bar. Change the numbers in the URL by hand and the timer will honour them.
Your own saved settings still live in your browser, so the timer reopens the way you left it when you come back without a link.
FAQ
What is the longest timer I can set?
180 minutes for any single interval, so a three-hour focus block is possible. Most people who try it discover that the last 40 minutes were not real work. For long stretches, two 90-minute blocks with a proper break between them usually produce more than one three-hour marathon.
Can I use a custom timer without breaks at all?
Set the short break to 1 minute and the auto-start toggles off, and the timer behaves like a plain countdown. If you genuinely want no break structure, the stopwatch counts up instead, which suits the flowtime technique where you work until you stop naturally and then rest.
Does the link include my tasks or history?
No. The link carries only the interval numbers and a couple of toggles. Your task list and session history stay in your browser’s local storage on your own device and are never encoded into a URL, so a preset you share reveals nothing about what you were working on.
What is a good custom interval to start with?
Try the focus length you can reliably finish, not the one you wish you could. For most people starting out that is between 15 and 30 minutes. Run it for a week, look at how many sessions you finished without bailing, and adjust from there rather than from a blog post.