What the pomodoro technique is
Francesco Cirillo’s method is simple enough to explain in a sentence: work for twenty-five minutes without interruption, then take five off, and after four rounds take a longer break. The value is not in the specific numbers — it is in having a defined boundary that makes starting easier and stopping legitimate.
The traditional twenty-five is a starting point, not a rule. Plenty of people work better on fifty and ten. The controls here go from five to sixty precisely because the right number is the one you will actually keep to.
A focus timer you can see from anywhere in the room
The background changes with the phase: green while you are working, blue on a break, red when the session ends. That means a glance from across the room tells you where you are without reading anything, which is the point of putting it on a second screen rather than in a menu bar.
Your configuration lives in the address bar, so a 50/10 pattern over three rounds is a bookmark rather than something you set up again every morning.
How to run a pomodoro session
Press F for fullscreen on a second monitor, or leave it in a window beside your work. Press Start and leave it alone — the round counter tracks where you are through the set.
There is no sound. That is deliberate: an alarm in a shared office is antisocial, and the colour change is unmissable in peripheral vision without interrupting anyone else.