A timer that takes the phone away from you while you work
The problem with studying next to a phone is the phone. This is an ordinary pomodoro timer with one difference: while a session runs it goes full screen and holds the screen awake, so the device in your hand is doing one job and it is not the one you would rather be doing.
25:00
FocusA web page cannot block your other apps, and anything claiming otherwise is not telling you the truth. What this does is take the whole screen and hold it awake for the session, so the phone is occupied being the timer. For actual blocking, Screen Time on iOS and Digital Wellbeing on Android are free and already on your phone.
25 minutes of work, 5 off, and 15 after every fourth. All adjustable
Full screen, and the screen is held awake through the Wake Lock API
Counted from a timestamp, so a backgrounded tab does not drift
Counted and kept in this browser, so you can see the day you actually had
How to use it
- Set the length if 25 minutes is not your rhythm, then start.
- Put the phone down, face up, where you can see it. The screen stays lit with the countdown on it.
- When the chime goes, take the break. It is timed too, and skipping breaks is what makes the next session worse.
- Come back to the page later and the count of what you finished today is still there.
Questions
Can this actually block my other apps?
No, and be careful of anything that says it can. A web page has no power over the rest of your phone. What it can genuinely do is take the whole screen, hold it awake for the length of the session, and put a large countdown on it, so the device is visibly occupied and picking it up means deliberately leaving the thing you started. If you want real blocking you need Screen Time on iOS or Digital Wellbeing on Android, which are free and already installed.
Will the timer drift if I switch tabs?
No. Browsers throttle background tabs, so a timer that counts down by subtracting one every second loses minutes. This one records the moment the session ends and reads the clock, so the number is right whenever you look at it, whatever the tab was doing.
Why 25 minutes?
It is the interval Francesco Cirillo settled on in the late 1980s with a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, which is where the name comes from. There is nothing magic about the number. If you focus in 50 minute blocks, set 50.
Does it make a sound?
A short tone generated by the browser at the end of each interval, no audio file involved. You can turn it off, and if you allow notifications you get one of those instead, which is more use when the tab is behind something else.