A Pomodoro timer for your desktop

How the Pomodoro Technique works

Francesco Cirillo came up with the method as a student in the late 1980s, timing his study with a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato, “pomodoro” in Italian. The idea is simple: work on one thing for a fixed stretch, then rest before your attention runs out.

• Pick one task and focus on it for 25 minutes.
• Take a 5-minute break: stand up, look away from the screen.
• After four focus periods, take a longer break of 15 minutes or so.

Octoolo starts with exactly those lengths. The dots under the countdown show where you are in the round of four, and the timer picks the short or the long break for you.

Choosing your own lengths

25 minutes is a starting point, not a rule. Every length can be changed:

Some people use 50 minutes of focus with 10-minute breaks for deep work, others 15 minutes to get going on a task they keep putting off. Try a few for a week and compare the bars. With Start the next period on its own turned on, focus and breaks follow one another without a click; leave it off if you would rather decide when the break ends.

Your focus, counted

Beside the timer, Octoolo shows how many minutes and focus periods you did today, the total for the last 7 days, and a bar for each of those days. A focus period counts when it runs to its end. Skip moves on without counting it, so the numbers stay honest.

To see where the rest of the day went, screen time shows the time spent in each app, hour by hour. The Pomodoro timer itself does not block sites or apps: the break from distraction is up to you.

It rings wherever you are working

The end of each period rings through the Octoolo app as a Windows notification, so it reaches you while you work in another program. Close Octoolo's window and the timer goes on: Octoolo stays in the corner of the taskbar while a period is running, and the notification's button starts the next one from there. Quitting Octoolo from that icon stops the timer. Nothing rings while the PC is asleep.