lofi30 45 minute focus timer

30:00
focus
0 sessions done today
lofi radio
idle
Fluid
lo-fi hiphop, future soul
🌧 rain
☕ cafe
colour
⚙ settings
focus (min)
break (min)
long break
space start / pause   r reset   m music

Radio streams by SomaFM and Radio Paradise, both listener supported.

Why 45 minutes works

Forty five minutes is the sweet spot for work with a warm up: writing something properly, building a thing, or reading your way into a problem before you can touch it. It is long enough that you get past the fidgeting and into the actual work, and short enough that you are not pretending you can concentrate for two hours straight. This page runs 45 minutes with an 8 minute break, because a longer block earns a longer breather.

Why 30 minutes and not 25

The classic pomodoro is 25 minutes, which is ideal for email, expenses and other small dread. But work that needs a run up has a habit of ending at 25 minutes precisely when you have stopped faffing and started thinking. Thirty buys you that extra stretch and still finishes before your attention wanders off to see if anyone has replied to anything. If you are a 25 purist, or one of those 50 minute machines, settings will take anything from 1 to 180.

How to use it

  1. Pick a station. Fluid is the proper lofi one. Drone Zone is for when words are hard.
  2. Add rain if you like. Add the cafe too, if you miss the background noise but not the queue.
  3. Press start, or hit the space bar like a professional.
  4. Work until the chime. Then get up. Actually get up.

Questions people ask

Is it free?

Properly free. No account, no email address, no cheerful message about updated terms. Nothing here leaves your browser, which also means your session count stays strictly between you and your laptop.

Where does the music come from?

Live streams from SomaFM and Radio Paradise, two of the good ones. Listener funded, advert free, and still going strong while everything else got an algorithm. If you have them on all week, send them a few quid.

Can I change the session length?

Yes. Settings sits under the timer and will accept anything from 1 to 180 minutes, along with your own break lengths. A one minute pomodoro is not a productivity method, but nobody is stopping you.

Does it work offline?

Mostly. The timer, the chime and the rain and cafe sounds are built inside your browser out of thin air, so they carry on regardless. The radio needs the internet, on account of being radio.

Why is there a cat?

There is always a cat. This one dozes while you are paused and opens their eyes the moment you start, which is more accountability than most of us get.

Other lengths

Same timer, same radio, different block. Pick whichever suits the work.

Built in Edinburgh, mostly in 30 minute bursts.