Pomodoro Timer — 25-Minute Focus Cycles, Free & No Signup

The Pomodoro Technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s while he was a university student in Rome. He used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (pomodoro in Italian) to break study sessions into fixed 25-minute blocks separated by short breaks. The cadence proved durable enough that it now ships as the default focus mode in dozens of productivity apps.

One pomodoro is 25 minutes of single-tasking followed by a 5-minute break. After four pomodoros, the short break is replaced by a longer 15 to 30 minute break to reset attention before the next set. The full sequence on this timer is:

1. Focus block (default 25 minutes) — one task, no context-switching, interruptions are deferred.
2. Short break (default 5 minutes) — physically step away from the screen if you can. Stretch, drink water.
3. Repeat focus + short break four times.
4. Long break (default 15 minutes) after the fourth focus — a genuine context switch. Walk outside, eat, or close your eyes.
5. Reset to step 1 and continue the cycle.

The state machine is deterministic. Given the count of completed focus sessions k, the break that follows is (k mod N) === 0 long, else short, where N is the "long break every" setting (default 4). Totals are computed two independent ways — once via a closed-form arithmetic formula and once via a step-by-step walk through the sequence — and the "cross-checked · 2 algorithms" badge in the live header appears only when both agree to the second.

The countdown ticks once per second using a wall-clock difference, so the remaining time stays accurate even when your browser throttles background tabs to 1Hz. The tab title updates with the format MM:SS · Focus so a pinned tab is glance-readable. The end-of-phase chime is two short sine tones (880 Hz then 660 Hz) synthesised via the Web Audio API — no audio file is downloaded.

• Cirillo Consulting — The Pomodoro Technique (official site)
• Cirillo Consulting — What is the Pomodoro Technique (overview)
• Francesco Cirillo — The Pomodoro Technique (book page)
• Ariga & Lleras (2011) — Brief and rare mental breaks keep you focused (Cognition journal)
• W3C — Web Audio API specification (chime synthesis)

Default phase lengths and cadence last cross-checked against Cirillo's sources on 2026-05-11. The technique itself is stable, so this page is reviewed annually.