Focus timer with a pet

How the rounds work

The rounds follow Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro® Technique, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used:

1. Pick one thing to work on, and press Start.
2. Work on only that until the round ends. Luck and Pati curl up and sleep while you do.
3. Take the break. It starts by itself, with a chime, and the pets wake up and cheer. Stand up and look away from the screen.
4. Every fourth round, take a longer break of 15 minutes. When a break ends, the timer waits for you to start the next round.

Twenty-five minutes isn't magic. Try 50 and 10 for deep work, or 15 and 5 on a tired afternoon. What matters is that the break comes on time. Why a pet helps, and what research says about breaks, is in A focus timer with a pet.

Leave it running

• It keeps time in the background. Switch tabs or reload the page and the round carries on where it was. A hidden tab can be held back by the browser, so the chime may come a few seconds late. Turn on notifications to hear about a round's end while you're in another app.
• Two tabs agree. Open it twice and both show the same round.
• It's light. During a round the sky holds still and the sleeping pets barely move, so a tab left open for hours costs your computer next to nothing.
• Today's rounds are counted in this browser, and start again at 4 in the morning, so a late night still counts as the day before.
• A round left far behind is let go. If you come back more than five minutes after a round ended (the laptop was shut, say), it doesn't spring a break on you. The minutes you focused still count.

Questions

Is anything sent anywhere?

No. The timer runs in this page, and today's rounds are kept in your browser's storage. We only count that a round was started, not what you were working on.

Can I click the pets?

Yes. Click one to wake it, drag it about, or throw it. During a round it dozes off again after a little while.

Why doesn't the next round start by itself?

So the break is a real one. A round that starts while you're still away from the desk would just run down unused.

Pomodoro® and Pomodoro Technique® are registered trademarks of Francesco Cirillo. Desktamer isn't affiliated with Francesco Cirillo.