A little tomato that
helps you focus.
Work on one thing while a tomato ripens. When it's ripe, take a real break. Tomatito is a friendly focus timer based on the Pomodoro® Technique.
Free for Mac (macOS 13 or later). No account needed.
Grow a tomato. Take a break. Repeat.
Short, fixed stretches of work with real breaks in between. Every length can be changed to suit what you're doing.
1Grow a tomato
Work on one thing for 25 minutes while the tomato ripens. When it's ripe you'll hear a chime, or feel a tap on your Apple Watch.
2Take a short break
Five minutes to stretch, drink some water, or look out of a window. The break is part of the method, not a reward.
3Every 4 (or however many you like), a long break
After four tomatoes you've earned fifteen minutes to rest properly. Four is tradition, not law. You're the gardener, so pick your own number.
Lives in your menu bar.
A tomato that fills with red as you work, with the time beside it. When it's ripe, your screen gently, but firmly, insists you take a break.
- 🍅Menu bar tomato that ripens as your minutes pass.
- 🌿A break screen with a breathing guide and an idea for the five minutes. Skipping takes a deliberate hold.
- ▢A floating timer you can park on any display.
- ☎︎Considerate: it pauses when your Mac sleeps, and waits for you to finish a call before it breaks in.
Made for when your hands are busy.
Cooking, building, cleaning, making things. Press start, put the phone down, and let your wrist tell you when it's time. Coming soon to the App Store.
- ⌚︎Taps on your wrist when a tomato is ripe, and double tap on Apple Watch to start or pause.
- 🗣Hands-free: “Hey Siri, start a tomato in Tomatito”. Works with the Action button too.
- 🔒On your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with a pause button.
- 🍃Breaks start by themselves, so you never have to touch the phone mid-task.
On Windows, Chromebook and everything else.
The same tomato runs in any modern browser. Install it as an app from Chrome or Edge and it gets its own window, works offline, and can pop out a mini timer that stays on top.
Small breaks, backed by research.
There's little research on the Pomodoro® Technique itself, but a good deal on the parts it's built from.
Scheduled breaks beat “I'll stop when I'm tired”
Students who took a fixed 6 minute break after every 24 minutes felt less tired and distracted, and more motivated, than students who chose their own breaks. They got the same done in less time.
Biwer et al., 2023 ↗Short breaks restore energy
A review pooling 22 studies found that breaks of ten minutes or less raise energy and reduce fatigue.
Albulescu et al., 2022 ↗A pause stops attention fading
On a long, repetitive task, performance slid for people who kept going, but not for people who briefly switched to something else.
Ariga & Lleras, 2011 ↗What we don't know: there's nothing magic about 25 and 5. In the student study, 12 minutes with 3 minute breaks worked about as well. What seems to matter is deciding the breaks in advance and actually taking them.