Pomodoro FAQ

A Pomodoro is one timed block of focused work. In Francesco Cirillo’s original method, the traditional Pomodoro is 30 minutes: 25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute break. You repeat it, and after every four Pomodoros you take a longer break.

Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. The technique is named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer its creator used as a student.

Francesco Cirillo, an Italian software designer and author. He began developing it in the late 1980s as a university student and later taught it to individuals and teams. Pomodoro® and Pomodoro Technique® are his registered trademarks; this site is not affiliated with him.

25 minutes is the length Cirillo’s method uses, not a number proven to be best. It is long enough to get real work done and short enough that starting feels easy. Research hasn’t found one ideal length, so if 25 minutes keeps cutting you off mid-thought, try 45 or 50 minutes instead.

Cirillo’s paper describes a short break of 3 to 5 minutes after each Pomodoro. This timer uses 5 minutes by default; you can set anything from 1 to 60 minutes in Timer settings.

After every four Pomodoros the method calls for a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes. This timer defaults to 15 minutes after 4 focus sessions; you can change both the length (1 to 90 minutes) and how many sessions come before it (2 to 10).

There is no official target. As a guide, one full cycle at the default settings (four 25-minute sessions, three 5-minute breaks and one 15-minute break) takes 2 hours 10 minutes, so a solid study or work day might hold three or four cycles. Track a normal week in the stats panel and plan from what you actually manage.

Evidence is limited but encouraging. A 2023 study of 87 university students found that taking scheduled breaks (24 minutes of study, 6 minutes of break) led to less fatigue and distraction and better mood than taking breaks whenever students felt like it, with the same amount of work finished. A 2022 meta-analysis found that short breaks reliably reduce fatigue, while effects on performance were small and uncertain. It suits some people and tasks better than others.

Some people with ADHD find short, visible time blocks helpful, and many shorten the sessions (for example 10 to 15 minutes) to make starting easier. It is not a treatment, and research on the technique for ADHD specifically is thin. This is general information, not medical advice. Speak to a clinician about ADHD or hearing concerns.

It comes from a 2014 analysis by the time-tracking company DeskTime: the 10% of its users with the most “productive” computer time worked, on average, for 52 minutes and then took a 17-minute break. It is usage data from one app, not a controlled study, and DeskTime’s own 2021 repeat found 112 minutes of work and 26 of break. Treat it as one more option to try.

Time blocking assigns tasks to slots in your calendar (for example 9 to 11 for the report). Pomodoro is about how you work inside a slot: short focused intervals with breaks. They combine well: block two hours for the report, then work through it in Pomodoros.

Yes. Open Timer settings and set focus (1 to 180 minutes), short break (1 to 60), long break (1 to 90) and how many focus sessions come before a long break (2 to 10). The presets (25/5, 50/10, 90/20) change them in one click. A session that is already running keeps its length; the new values apply from the next one.

Yes. The timer stores the time it should end, not a count of ticks, so it stays accurate when your browser slows down background tabs. When you press Start, the alarm is also scheduled on the browser’s audio clock, which background throttling doesn’t delay. What can lag: in Chrome, a tab hidden for more than 5 minutes with no sound playing checks timers only once a minute, so the tab title and notification may arrive up to a minute late. Phones may pause background tabs completely, and nothing runs while a computer sleeps.

Notifications appear only if you pressed “Enable notifications” and allowed them, and only while the tab is in the background (on screen you see the message in the timer instead). Also check that your operating system allows notifications from your browser, that focus or do-not-disturb mode is off, and that the site isn’t blocked in your browser’s site settings. Some mobile browsers don’t support web notifications at all.

Partly. Once the page has loaded, the timer, tasks, stats and the generated sounds (brown, pink and white noise, rain and fireplace) keep working without a connection. The café and forest recordings download the first time you play them, and reloading the page needs a connection. An installable offline version is planned but not available yet.

Space starts or pauses, S skips to the next session, R resets, F toggles fullscreen, M mutes all sounds, N jumps to the new-task field and ? shows the list. Escape exits fullscreen or closes a dialog. Shortcuts don’t fire while you type in a field, and you can turn single-key shortcuts off in Timer settings.

Open Timer settings and untick “Show the countdown in the tab title”. The page title then stays as it is, and the time is only shown on the page.

Yes, it works in mobile browsers and the layout is built for small screens. Keep the page open and on screen: phones often pause background tabs, so a timer in a tab you switched away from may not ring on time. Fullscreen mode asks the phone to keep the screen on where the browser supports it.

Yes. The classroom timer has huge digits for a projector, presets for tidy-up (3 minutes), group work (15) and tests (45), a calm end chime and a progress ring. Classroom mode and fullscreen show no ads.

Nobody knows yet. A 2024 meta-analysis found small benefits of white and pink noise on attention tasks for young people with ADHD, a small negative effect for people without ADHD, and no studies of brown noise at all. Many people simply find brown noise less harsh because more of its energy is in the low frequencies. Try each at a low volume and keep whatever you can forget about. This is general information, not medical advice. Speak to a clinician about ADHD or hearing concerns.

At a moderate volume, generally yes; loudness and time are what harm hearing. The World Health Organization’s safe-listening guidance treats 80 decibels for up to 40 hours a week as the limit for adults, and suggests keeping the volume down and taking listening breaks. This is general information, not medical advice. Speak to a clinician about ADHD or hearing concerns.

Yes. Play music in another tab or app and leave our sounds off; the timer and its chime work on their own. If the chime is hard to hear over music, raise the alarm volume in Timer settings.

Yes, in your browser’s local storage on this device, together with your settings, stats and sound mix. They are there when you come back in the same browser, but they don’t sync to other devices, and clearing your browser data removes them.

No. There are no accounts, and your tasks, stats and settings never leave your browser. The site uses Google Analytics to count visits and page views (it sets cookies), but it never receives your tasks, stats or sound choices. You can delete everything stored by this site with “Delete all my data”.

Yes. Every feature is free, with no sign-up. The site may show ads on content pages in the future, but never inside the timer or the sound mixer, and never in fullscreen or classroom mode.