🍅Pomodoro timer

✓ Tested & verified Updated: Aug 11, 2026 How this works

Pomodoro timer

Focus · round 1

25:00

Ends at —

Focus Break

Try also

What are the pomodoro intervals?

The TimerPlan pomodoro timer runs the standard cycle — 25 minutes of work, a 5-minute break, and a longer 15-minute break after every fourth round — and it counts the rounds, because the count is the part of the technique that does the work. Francesco Cirillo’s method treats one 25-minute block as the unit you plan and estimate in, so a session that has no round number is only a timer with a reputation.

Both lengths are editable. Fifty and ten suits work that takes a while to get into; fifteen and three suits reading with a tired head. What should not change halfway through is the ratio, because the point is a rhythm you stop noticing.

Between rounds nothing starts on its own: the break waits for you to press. A break that begins while you are still typing is a break you never take.

The standard cycle, and the two that people most often move to:

Cycle	Work	Break	Long break	Suits
Classic	25 min	5 min	15 min after 4	Task lists, admin, code
Deep	50 min	10 min	30 min after 3	Reading, writing, anything slow to enter
Light	15 min	3 min	15 min after 4	A tired head, or starting after a stall

A round is a unit of planning as much as a unit of time. Written as “this will take three rounds”, an estimate becomes checkable in a way that “this will take an hour or two” never does, and the counter on this page is what makes that possible.

For a single stretch with no cycle, the online timer is simpler, and the classroom timer is the version built to be read across a room. If the point is recording what you did rather than counting it down, the study session log in time plans keeps the sessions. To count up through an open-ended stretch of work instead, use the count-up timer.

Frequently asked questions

Why 25 minutes and not 30?

Because the method came from a kitchen timer that Cirillo happened to own, and the interval stuck because it works rather than because it was derived. Twenty-five is long enough to get somewhere and short enough that starting feels cheap, which is the actual mechanism — the hard part of focused work is beginning, and a small unit lowers the cost of beginning. The number is not sacred, and the timer here lets you change it.

Should the break timer start automatically?

Not here, deliberately. An auto-starting break is running while you finish your sentence, so you take three minutes of a five-minute break and gradually conclude that breaks do not help. Pressing start is one click and makes the break a decision. The round counter keeps its place either way, so stepping away for ten minutes between rounds costs nothing.

Does a long break every four rounds matter?

It is the part people drop first and miss most. Four rounds is around two hours of concentrated work, which is roughly where sustained attention starts costing more than it returns; the longer break is what makes the second half of the day resemble the first. If you only keep one rule from the method beyond the timer itself, keep this one.

Can I use this for study rather than work?

It is the same cycle, and it suits revision especially well because the round count doubles as a record of how much you actually did. A common variation for reading is fifty minutes on and ten off, since getting into a text takes longer than getting into a task list. Set the two lengths and the timer keeps counting rounds regardless of what you put in them.

What happens if I close the tab in the middle of a round?

The round is gone — the timer lives in the page, and nothing is written to your device. That is the trade for a tool that needs no account and stores nothing about you. If you want a session that survives a closed tab, the study session log under time plans keeps a record you own rather than a countdown.

How this works

The cycle is a chain of ordinary countdowns with a phase and a round counter kept alongside. Each phase stores its absolute finish time and is drawn by subtraction, so a tab left in the background through a whole round is exact when you return to it, and the tone for the end of each phase is scheduled onto the audio clock when that phase starts. When a work phase ends the timer switches to a break — a long break if the completed round is a multiple of four — and waits for a press rather than starting it; when a break ends the round counter advances. Editing either length applies from the next phase, so a change made mid-round does not move the ending you are currently watching. A screen wake lock is held while any phase runs. Nothing is stored: the lengths travel in the address bar, so a link carries a configured cycle to someone else.

Sources:

Making the cycle stick

The round number is the point. Estimating work in rounds — three for this, one for that — is where the method beats a plain timer, and it needs the count to be visible.

The break is not optional. Skipping breaks turns the method into a long timer with interruptions, which is worse than no method at all.

The alarm has to reach you. A focus timer that rings only when you are looking at it defeats itself; this one schedules its tone in advance, so it sounds from a background tab.