Some Pomodoro Apps are straightforward time management tools — giving you a digital way to track 25 minutes, followed by a 5 minute break. Other Pomodoro apps offer customization, such as a sound library for you to play ambient noise while you’re on task. Finally, some Pomodoro apps are designed to integrate seamlessly with your workflow processes and offer advanced analytics that let you look for inefficiencies in your schedule.
To help you find the best one for your needs, we put together a list of the 9 best Pomodoro apps that increase productivity.
If you’re looking for a free Pomodoro timer that helps increase your productivity while integrating with Slack, check out Focus Mode by Geekbot.
Best Pomodoro Apps to Increase Productivity
- “Focus Mode” by Geekbot
- Forest
- Minimalist
- FocusList
- Pomotodo
- Focus Booster
- Focus Keeper
- Clockwork Tomato
- Focus To-Do
Before You Use Pomodoro Apps, Read This!
- Apps don’t make you productive, you do. Trying different apps is great, but beware of turning the process into ever-lasting search for productivity. Once you’ve found an app that works for your specific contenxt, stick to it and focus on your productivity habits.
- Develop your productivity habits. There’s small productivity habits that, in tandem with pomodoro apps, increase their efficiency and value by several times. Examples include: starting pomodoro sessions around the same time, scheduling break activities, planning “cheat” productivity days, and so on. Slowly integrate smaller habits with your pomodoro sessions and you’ll be astonished with results.
- Manage distractions professionally. Learning to say “no” to colleagues in the chat, or using DnD mode in slack or MS Teams that comes with some pomodoro apps is essential when you block time for being productive. Keep and update a list of five most common distactions during your pomodoro sessions and gradfually add solutions or “neutralizers” next to each item on your list.
Now that you’re equipped with knowledge on making the most of your pomodoro sessions, let’s cover the best pomodoro apps available right now!
1. “Focus Mode” by Geekbot
(Recently Voted #3 Product of the Day in Product Hunt)
When we made Focus Mode — our free Pomodoro App — we wanted something that increased your productivity while integrating with your existing workflow and the tools you already use.
That’s why we designed Focus Mode to integrate directly into your Slack channel. Slack is a great tool, but it’s also known for causing a lot of interruptions. By putting our Pomodoro App into Slack, we’re able to help you curb those interruptions.
Let’s look at how.
With Focus Mode, you can customize how long you want to be in “focus mode” for before taking a break.
Once you turn on Focus Mode, your Slack status reflects the current task you’re working on. This is really helpful for teams because now your co-workers and supervisors know what you’re working on without having to interrupt you to find out.
For more info on how our free Pomodoro for Slack integration works, see this quick ~1-minute video below, or read our post where we discuss its benefits and functionality in greater detail.
2. Forest
Forest is one of the most unique Pomodoro apps on our list. The idea is that every task is represented in the app by a tree and as you work on your task, your tree grows. But if you abandon your task, your tree dies. So the goal is to grow a forest by constantly adding tasks and completing them.
If you’re interested in learning how Forest looks in practice before downloading it to your phone, here’s a comprehensive review that goes through what each screen looks like.
3. Minimalist
Minimalist is a Pomodoro timer app for people who like a sleek, modern look. Whereas most Pomodoro apps on our list are some kind of red — pomodoro is Italian for tomato — the Minimalist is all black and white.
When you open the app, you’re taken to a blank white screen. From there, you can swipe down to add new tasks. You can assign due dates to each task and also give the task a priority, from low to high.
High priority tasks are raised up to the top of your screen. Then you can click on the task and Minimalist takes you to another mostly white screen with a thin black circle that works as your Pomodoro timer.
4. FocusList
FocusList is a daily planner and focus app that works with all iOS products (including Mac computers).
The app comes with a few more features than most basic Pomodoro apps. For example, you can open up stats to see a calendar view of your past activities. This lets you track how often you were on task during workdays and whether any day of the week was particularly productive (or unproductive).
Plus, you can drill down to each day and see which exact tasks you worked on.
FocusList is better suited for individuals who want to disconnect from their normal work channels than it is for someone looking to improve their productivity within their team.
5. Pomotodo
Pomotodo has a free version and a paid, professional version. Pomotodo works with both iOS and Android devices.
With its pro plan, which costs $3.90 a month, you get advanced features such as:
- Advanced to-do lists. With to-do lists, you can set subtasks, reminders, recurring tasks, and add notes.
- Pomo goals. Set goals for how many pomos you want to complete in a given day.
- Integrations with iCalendar and Google Calendar. Put your tasks in iCalendar and Google Calendar. This can be shared with your team members so they can check your online Calendar to see if you’re currently working on a scheduled Pomo.
- Work report. Get end of the week work reports emailed to you, highlighting areas where you were most productive, including what tasks you finished.
- Customized duration. Like most Pomodoro apps, Pomotodo lets you customize your Pomo duration — 10 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, etc.
- A larger library of sounds. Some Pomodoro apps are completely silent, others have a soft ticking noise, and some even let you use your own music. When you upgrade to Pomotodo’s pro version, you get access to a variety of sounds, such as ambient white noise tracks — like birds in the rainforest or waves crashing on a beach.
Given its rather lightweight advanced features, there are more powerful Pomodoro apps on our list for a similar price.
6. Focus Booster
Focus Booster offers three different plans, ranging from free to $4.99 per month.
There’s the free plan, which is a simple, lightweight Pomodoro app. You can track 20 Pomodoro sessions per month. Once you start using the paid plans (with individual and professional tiers), you gain access to a dashboard to help you overview your productivity.
On the Individual Plan — which is $2.99 a month — you get 200 Pomodoro sessions per month. If you’re sticking with 25-minute Pomo, that means you get around 83 hours worth of time tracking a month, which equals just a little over 20 hours a week.
On the professional plan ($4.99 a month) you get unlimited Pomodoro sessions, plus you can also tie in revenue reporting with your Pomodoro reports.
Note: While tying in revenue reporting is a nice feature, it’s not so simple to show a relationship between how hard someone is working and how much revenue has increased. A Pomodoro measures the length of a task, not the effectiveness of a task.
7. Focus Keeper
Focus Keeper is a simple, straightforward Pomodoro app that was developed solely for iOS devices.
Like other Pomodoro apps on our list, you can use Focus Keeper to:
- Set a task you need to finish.
- Set the timer for 25 minutes.
- Stay focused until the timer rings, alerting you it’s time for a break.
- Take a short five-minute break. Let your eyes rest by looking away from the screen, or get up, stretch, and walk around.
- After finishing four focus sessions, the app tells you to take a longer break (between 15-30 minutes).
If you’re looking for more features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Premium Focus Keeper users have access to custom Pomodoro sessions, color and theme options, data reports beyond three days, and a variety of alarms and ticking sounds.
8. Clockwork Tomato
Clockwork Tomato is an established Pomodoro app that’s specifically built for Android devices. It has been on the market for years and has a receptive audience with Android users.
You can configure the times, colors, sounds, and style. So, for example, you can set a 30 minute Pomodoro with a 10 minute break and you can customize it so the Clockwork Tomato plays the sound of rain falling while you’re on task.
If you want more functionality from Clockwork Tomato, you can upgrade within the app and get activity logs of your productivity.
9. Focus To-Do
Focus To-Do is a Pomodoro app that works with both iOS and Android devices. It has a really simple interface but offers more customization than other straightforward Pomodoro apps on our list.
For example, you can create categories or labels that are color coordinated, such as having a category for project-specific tasks. This is helpful when it comes to looking at Focus To-do’s analytics, because now you can clearly see which tasks are taking up the most of your time.
There is a paid version for Focus To-Do, but most customers agree that the free version alone is more than advanced enough, as with the free version you get categories, sounds, and customizable timers.
Final Thoughts: Are You Ready to Increase Your Productivity?
As we said at the beginning, there are literally hundreds of productivity apps (if not more) available on the Apple Store and the Google Play store. Then there are even more platforms available online.
You can choose a simple Pomodoro timer that doesn’t offer any advanced features — such as analytics and a library of sounds to listen to while you’re on task — or you can choose a Pomodoro app that lets you write a daily task list, organize our tasks by category, and view analytics at the end of the week.
If you’re looking for a free Pomodoro timer that helps increase your productivity while integrating with Slack, check out Focus Mode by Geekbot.