Free Pomodoro focus timer.

Francesco Cirillo worked it out as a university student in the 1980s, timing his study blocks with a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato, which is pomodoro in Italian. You work on one task until the timer rings, take a short break, and after every fourth block take a longer one.

In his book, a block is 25 minutes and a short break about 5. For the longer break he suggests 20 to 30 minutes. The point of the fixed end is that starting gets easier when you know exactly when you can stop.

No study shows that 25 minutes is better than other lengths. The few experiments that tested Pomodoro-style schedules each tried one or two fixed rhythms, and a 2025 comparison of fixed, self-chosen and flexible breaks found no difference in how much students got done.

So pick the block you can finish without reaching for your phone. Start with 25 / 5 when focusing is hard, move to 50 / 10 for deep work that takes a while to get into, and set your own length for exams or long writing sessions.

In a 2023 study, 87 university students spent a day of real self-study either taking breaks whenever they liked or on a fixed schedule. Those on fixed breaks reported less fatigue and distraction and more concentration and motivation, and they got as much done.

A 2022 review of short breaks found the same pattern on a larger scale: breaks reliably raised energy and lowered fatigue, while their effect on performance was small. The students who chose their own breaks also studied in longer stretches and felt more tired for it, which is the case for letting a timer decide.

Each finished session fills a tile of the day, and each day you focus fills a square of your year. It is the same grid the HabitKit app draws for habits: you see the days add up, and a missed day stays one empty square instead of wiping out the ones around it.

Your streak counts every day with at least one session. A light day keeps it going. The daily goal (four sessions to start) only decides how full the square gets.

There is no account and nothing to sign up for. Your sessions, labels and settings are saved in this browser on this device and never sent anywhere. The page counts visits without cookies or anything that identifies you.

That also means clearing your browser data deletes your history. Your focus has an export (JSON or CSV) and an import, so you can keep a copy or move to another browser.