Pomodoro Timer
A 25/5 focus timer that still keeps honest time when the tab has been in the background for half an hour.
Runs in your browserFocus
25:00
Ready · Round of
A skipped focus round is not counted as completed.
Today
Pomodoros finished
0
Focus minutes
0
This session
0
Counted for
Settings
A changed length applies from the next round; a round already in progress is not cut short. Settings are kept in this browser only.
About this tool
The point of a pomodoro timer is that it tells you when to stop, which means it has to be right. Most browser timers are not: they count by adding one every time a one-second interval fires, and browsers throttle those intervals hard in background tabs, so a timer left in another tab can drift by minutes. This one stores the moment the round should end and works backwards from the clock each time it redraws, so throttling and a sleeping laptop cannot make it run slow. It keeps the classic rhythm — a focus round, a short break, a long break after every fourth round — tracks what you have finished today, and chimes, or notifies you, when a round ends.
How to use it
- 1Set the lengths you want and how many focus rounds should pass before a long break. The defaults are 25, 5, 15 and four rounds, and your changes are remembered in this browser.
- 2Press Start. The tab title shows the remaining time, so you can keep the timer in a background tab and still see where you are when you glance at the window.
- 3Let it run through the cycle, or press Skip to move on early. Skipping a focus round deliberately does not add it to today's count — only rounds that actually ran down are counted.
Frequently asked questions
I switched tabs and the timer seems to have jumped. Did it lose time?
It did not lose time, and it did not gain any either. What you are seeing is the opposite: the display refreshes less often in a background tab, so instead of ticking smoothly it jumps when it does update. The remaining time is always recalculated from the clock against a fixed end point, so the round finishes at the right moment regardless. A timer that counted interval firings would instead have fallen behind by however much the browser throttled it, and it would have reported 25 minutes as having lasted half an hour.
The chime did not play on the first round.
Browsers block audio until the user has interacted with the page, and they are strict about it — a page that has not been touched cannot make a sound, by design. Pressing Start counts as that interaction, so from the first round onwards the chime works. If you want to confirm it before relying on it, use the test button in the settings panel, which also counts as an interaction.
Will it keep counting if I close the tab or shut the laptop?
Closing the page ends the round; there is no background process to carry on, because this is a page and not an app you install. Suspending the laptop is different: the end point is a fixed moment on the clock, so when the machine wakes the timer immediately shows the round as finished and moves on, rather than resuming from where it was interrupted. In practice that means a round survives a screen lock, and does not survive closing the tab.