Free Online Focus Timer

How to use

1. 1

   Choose a length. Pick a Pomodoro preset of 25/5, 50/10 or 90/20 minutes, or set a custom length from 1 to 180 minutes with an optional break.

2. 2

   Set the scene. Choose a background: Sea, Night, Dawn or Forest. Add rain, ocean or white noise if you want it, and set the volume.

3. 3

   Press Begin. Press Begin, or the space bar, and hand the time-keeping over to the screen. Press F for full screen if you want nothing else in view.

4. 4

   Work until the bell. Stay on one task until the soft bell rings. Press Space to pause if you genuinely stop, and R to reset.

5. 5

   Take the break, or start again. Nothing starts on its own. Choose Start break or Start again when you are ready.

Why an aesthetic timer helps you focus

Most of the drag in a work session comes from watching the clock. You check the time, do the arithmetic, and wonder whether the next thing will fit. A running timer takes that job off you: the answer is already on screen, so you stop asking the question. It also draws a visible boundary around the work. Starting is easier when the commitment is twenty-five minutes rather than an open evening. Leaving early is harder to justify while the clock is still counting.

The boundary matters after an interruption too. Sophie Leroy’s 2009 work on attention residue describes how part of your mind stays on the previous task when you switch before finishing it. A timer will not stop you from switching, but it does make the cost visible. You can see exactly what you are cutting short. A calm screen and a steady sound help in a plainer way. When there is nothing new to look at, there is less reason to reach for your phone.

The Pomodoro technique, briefly

Francesco Cirillo worked out the Pomodoro technique as a university student in the late 1980s, using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer; pomodoro is Italian for tomato. The method is plain: twenty-five minutes of single-task work, then a five-minute break, and a longer break of fifteen to thirty minutes after four rounds. The short interval is the point. Twenty-five minutes is small enough that starting rarely feels like a decision. The break is close enough that a distracting thought can wait until it arrives.

This timer keeps the rhythm and leaves the break to you. When the bell rings you choose Start break or Start again, so a session that is going well is never cut off by software. A break never starts while you are still typing either. The longer presets suit work that takes a while to warm up: fifty minutes with a ten-minute break, or ninety with twenty. The ninety-minute figure comes from the idea that attention rises and falls in ultradian cycles across the day. Take it as a shape people find useful rather than a prescription.

Countdown or stopwatch?

A countdown suits work where the amount of time is the decision. You have an hour before class, so you spend an hour. A stopwatch suits work where the task decides. Open-ended reading, a first draft, revision that is finally going somewhere: none of these fit neatly into a box. A clock counting toward zero can pull you out of a good stretch. Counting up removes the deadline and keeps the record instead. You still finish with a number, and it is the honest one.

Counting up is also the honest way to learn how long your work really takes. Most people underestimate. A week of stopwatch sessions will tell you what a problem set or a chapter actually costs. The next plan is then less optimistic and more useful. This is the mode people mean when they look for an aesthetic stopwatch: the same full screen and the same quiet background, with no deadline attached. Pick the mode before you begin, and the timer remembers your choice for next time.

Getting the most out of a study session

Decide the one thing before you start, and write it down if that helps. A session with two goals usually turns into a session of switching between them. Put your phone in another room rather than face down on the desk, because the distance does more than the gesture. Set the ambient sound low enough that you stop noticing it after a minute. It is there to cover the room, not to give you something to listen to. Then press F for full screen, so the clock is the only thing on the display.

Pause the timer when you actually stop. A session that ran fifty minutes while fifteen of them went to your phone tells you nothing later. If you study with someone, copy the link and send it. The settings travel in the address. A fifty-minute session with a ten-minute break, the night background, and rain opens the same way at their end. And if you arrive at the desk still wound up, spend a minute on the box breathing timer elsewhere on Stillsea before you press Begin.

Link parameters

Every setting travels in the address bar, so a link can open the timer already set up.

Frequently Asked Questions