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Pomodoro Timer icon

Pomodoro Timer

Stay focused with Pomodoro technique. Timer, notifications, and site blocker.

Version
3.0.2

This one is built but not on a store yet. The page is here so you can see what it does.

Twenty-five minutes of work is easy to plan and hard to protect, because the tab that ends the session is always one keystroke away. This timer runs the focus and break cycle in the background, counts down on the toolbar badge whether or not the popup is open, and will swap a distracting site for a blank stop page while a focus session is running.

When you'd reach for it

  • Running a session without watching a clock

    Press play in the popup and the remaining time appears on the toolbar badge, red during focus and green during breaks, grey when you pause. The countdown is driven from the start timestamp in the background worker, so closing the popup or switching windows does not throw it off. A desktop notification tells you when the session ends.

  • Keeping certain sites out of your work block

    Open the blocked sites panel in the popup, or the options page, and add domains like twitter.com one at a time. Turn on site blocking and any tab that loads one of them during a running focus session is replaced by a stop page. Subdomains of a listed domain count too, and breaks are left alone. Blocking is off until you switch it on.

  • Changing the cycle to lengths you'll actually keep

    The options page sets the focus length, the short break, the long break and how many focus sessions come before the long one. It starts at 25, 5 and 15 minutes with a long break every fourth session. The popup shows a ring of session dots and a Session 2/4 style counter so you can see where you are in the cycle.

Permissions & privacy

storageSaves your settings and data in the browser's own storage, on this device.
tabsCan see the titles and addresses of your open tabs.
notificationsShows system notifications.
alarmsSchedules timers so something can happen later, even with the popup closed.
webNavigationNotices when a tab moves to a new page.
<all_urls>Every site — because it has to work on whatever page you're on.

It runs only the code shipped inside the package — no remote code is fetched.

Questions people ask

How do I use the pomodoro technique in Chrome?

Pin the extension, open the popup and press play to start a focus session. When the time runs out you get a notification and the timer switches to a break; press play again to run the break. The reset button restarts the current session, and the skip button jumps straight to the next one.

Does the timer keep running when I close the popup?

Yes. The countdown lives in the background service worker, which uses a Chrome alarm plus the session start time rather than a ticking counter in the popup. That means the remaining time stays correct even if the worker sleeps in between, and the toolbar badge keeps showing it.

How do I block distracting websites while I work?

Turn on the site blocking toggle in the options page, then add the domains you want stopped. Blocking only applies while a focus session is actually running, so break time and idle time are unaffected. A blocked tab is replaced with a full-screen stop page rather than being closed.

Does the next session start by itself?

No. When a session finishes, the extension sends the notification, moves to the next mode and leaves the timer paused at its full length. You press play when you are ready. After the last focus session in a cycle it schedules the long break, then restarts the session count.

What permissions does the manifest declare, and where is my data kept?

Storage, tabs, notifications, alarms and webNavigation, plus host access to all sites. Storage is where the timer state, your chosen durations and the blocked domain list are written, inside your own browser profile. Alarms is what schedules the end of a session while the popup is closed, and notifications is what shows the desktop message when it fires. Tabs and webNavigation, together with the all-sites host access, are what let a page you open be checked against your blocked list during a focus session — a blocked site can be on any domain, which is why the host access is not narrowed.

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