This is a pomodoro timer that fills the whole screen with digits large enough to read from the back of a classroom. Press F to go fullscreen, Esc to come back. Set any focus and break length you like, press start, and the countdown takes over the display.
How to use it
- Set the minutes. The timer opens at 25 / 5 / 15. Change any of them before you go fullscreen, because the settings panel is not visible once you are in it.
- Press F, or click the fullscreen button. The browser hands the whole display to the timer. Everything except the countdown, the current mode, and the progress ring disappears.
- Press Space to start. Space also pauses. Esc drops you back to the normal page with the session still running.
What it is good for
A room full of people can see one clock. That solves a small problem that comes up constantly: a teacher with twenty students on a writing exercise, a workshop with breakout groups, a speaker who keeps running over.
On a second monitor it works differently. Drag the tab to the spare screen, go fullscreen, and you have a physical-looking timer sitting beside your work without stealing any of your main display. Several people use it exactly this way instead of buying a desk cube timer.
For exams and tests, set the focus length to the paper length and leave the breaks alone. Common exam durations have their own pages: 45-minute timer, 60-minute timer, 90-minute timer, 2-hour timer.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Space | Start or pause |
| R | Reset the current session |
| S | Skip to the next interval |
| F | Enter or leave fullscreen |
| T | Switch between light and dark |
| Esc | Leave fullscreen |
Dark mode is worth a mention for projectors. A white screen at full brightness in a dim room is unpleasant to look at for 25 minutes. Press T before you project.
Keeping the screen on
Browsers and operating systems dim or sleep the display when nobody touches the keyboard, which is exactly what happens during a focus session.
The timer itself is unaffected. It stores the finishing time rather than counting ticks, so a display that went to sleep and woke up shows the correct remaining time and the alarm still fires. What you lose is the visible clock, which matters in a classroom.
The fix is at the operating system level: set the screen timeout longer in your display settings before a long session, or plug the laptop in, since most machines use a much longer timeout on mains power.
FAQ
How do I exit the full screen timer?
Press Esc, or press F again. Both return you to the normal page and the session keeps running underneath, so leaving fullscreen to check something does not cost you the pomodoro. Your remaining time, current mode, and session count are all preserved.
Can I use this as a countdown timer for a presentation?
Yes. Set the focus length to your slot length and start it as you begin. The ring gives you a sense of how much is left without reading numbers, which is easier to glance at mid-sentence. Turn the alarm volume down first if the laptop is connected to room speakers.
Will the timer still ring if the screen sleeps?
The alarm fires as long as the tab is open and the browser has not been closed. A sleeping display does not stop it. A laptop that goes into full system sleep is different, since the whole machine stops. The timer shows the correct elapsed time when you wake it, but the sound will have been missed.
Does the full screen timer work on a phone or tablet?
It does, and a tablet propped on a desk makes a decent dedicated timer. Mobile browsers handle fullscreen inconsistently and some show a persistent bar. A tablet also suspends background tabs quickly, so keep the timer as the active tab rather than switching away from it.