How the Pomodoro Technique Works
The technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The standard cycle is: 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5-minute short break. After four completed sessions (called pomodoros), you take a longer break of 15–30 minutes.
Fixed time boxes reduce the friction of starting a task, limit the scope of any single effort, and make breaks mandatory rather than optional. The short break at the end of each session serves as a hard stop that prevents long unstructured work stretches.
Controls and Auto-Start
Start begins the countdown. Pause freezes it; Resume continues from where it stopped. Skip jumps to the next phase immediately — useful when a break ends early or a session wraps up ahead of time. Reset returns the clock to the start of the current phase without advancing the session count.
With Auto-start enabled, the next phase begins automatically at the end of the current one. With it off, you press Start manually between phases — useful if you need a moment to settle before beginning.
Session Notes and Daily Summary
Enter a short note before or during a work session describing what you are working on. When the session completes, the note is saved to the session log with a timestamp. The daily summary shows total sessions completed, total focus time, and the full log. Data persists in localStorage so it survives page reloads within the same day.
Timer Accuracy and Background Tabs
The countdown uses setInterval, which browsers may throttle for background tabs — typically to once per second or slower. A timer running in the background may drift behind real time. For accurate timing, keep the tab visible. The timer measures elapsed wall-clock time on each tick rather than relying on tick count alone.