30 Minute Timer

Half an hour is the smallest block that fits real work

Thirty minutes is long enough to finish a task rather than only open it, and short enough to drop between two other commitments without moving either of them. It is also long enough that you stop watching the count, which is the part a timer is genuinely for.

• A workout with a warm-up, a main set and a cool-down inside one count
• A focus block on a single task, with the phone left in another room
• A meeting kept to its slot, with the count visible to everybody in it
• Something in the oven that wants a check rather than constant attention
• A study block covering one topic or one problem set
• A room rather than a surface: the longer clean that needs a definite end
• A lunch break that finishes when the alarm says it does
• Agreed screen time, settled by the alarm instead of by argument

A workout from warm-up to cool-down

Half an hour covers a whole session, which is why the count belongs on a shelf or a second screen rather than in your hand. Prop the device up, press the fullscreen button, and the digits become readable from the floor. If a set runs long, Pause holds what is left instead of leaving you to guess how much of the session is still ahead.

A focus block that ends on its own

The reason a fixed block beats a vague intention is that it takes away the decision to stop. Thirty minutes sits past the point where starting feels expensive and short of the point where the end is out of sight. Press Start, put the tab behind whatever you are working in, and let the alarm be the thing that brings you back. Nothing needs checking while it runs.

Thirty minutes in the oven, from another room

Cooking is where a browser timer gets tested, because you are rarely in front of the screen for the whole time. The count does not mind: pressing Start makes a note of the wall clock time this half hour runs out at, and the digits are worked out backwards from it. A browser throttling an unwatched tab therefore changes how often those digits repaint and nothing at all about when the alarm fires. The one thing worth checking first is volume, since a beep meant for a desk does not always carry to a kitchen two doors away.

Reading the remaining time from a distance

The fullscreen button expands the digits to the whole screen, which is the difference between squinting at a tab and glancing at a number. It uses the browser's own fullscreen mode where that exists, and falls back to filling the window on iPhones and iPads, where Safari does not allow it for an arbitrary element. The speaker button mutes the alarm for a quiet room, and the message at zero is big enough to notice without any sound at all.

Half an hour split into two stages

Some half hours are really two shorter pieces: a warm-up and a main set, or a block of work followed by a review. There is no multi-stage mode here on purpose, because a stage change is usually the moment you want to look up anyway. Run the first piece, press Reset, set the second, press Start. For twenty-five minutes of work followed by a five-minute break, the pomodoro timer handles the handover for you and counts the sessions, and the 5 minute timer covers the break on its own.