Pomodoro Timer

When you would use this

A pomodoro is a fixed block of work followed by a fixed break, repeated. The technique is older than most of the software built for it and the software mostly gets one thing wrong. The thing is drift. A timer implemented as a countdown subtracts a second every time a tick fires, and a browser does not fire ticks reliably in a tab you are not looking at. Backgrounded tabs are throttled to once a second at best and once a minute at worst, and on a phone the tab may be discarded entirely. A countdown built that way is minutes wrong after a phone call and starts again from the beginning after a reload, which is when people stop trusting it. This one never counts down. It records the moment the session started and works out where it is by reading the clock, so throttling cannot affect it, backgrounding cannot affect it, and a reload resumes exactly where it left off. Pausing banks the elapsed time and starting again picks it up. The schedule runs focus, break, focus, break, with a longer break at an interval you choose, and it ends on work rather than on a break. A session that finishes with five minutes of nothing has not finished, and a plan that includes that break reports a finish time later than the work actually stops. The session is kept in this browser and goes nowhere. There is no account, nothing is synced, and clearing site data clears it. Aesthetic mode puts the clock full screen over an original animated scene: a desk at a window, a warm lamp, a city going dark. The palette follows the session, so working is a late evening and a break is a cooler night with rain against the glass and the cat asleep on the books. It is one SVG rather than a video or an image, so it costs a few kilobytes, stays sharp at any size, and stops moving entirely for anyone whose system asks for reduced motion.\n\nThere are no streaks and no daily targets, deliberately. A timer that tells you off for yesterday is a timer people close.

Questions

Does it keep running if I switch tabs?

Yes, and this is the thing most browser timers get wrong. A browser throttles a background tab's timers hard, so a countdown that subtracts a second on every tick loses minutes while you are reading something else. This one stores when it started and reads the clock, which cannot drift and cannot be throttled.

What happens if I reload?

It comes back exactly where it was, still running. The session is kept in this browser, and what is stored is the moment it began rather than how much is left, so the elapsed time is worked out fresh from the clock every time the page opens.

What is aesthetic mode?

A full screen view with an original animated scene behind the clock: a desk at a window, a lamp, a city at dusk. The palette changes with the session, so focus is a warm evening and a break is a cool night with rain and the cat asleep. It is drawn as one SVG, so it is sharp on a phone and on a large display, and it holds still for anyone who asks for reduced motion.