Tomatino: Pomodoro Timer for the macOS Menu Bar with Focus and Music

17:42running 17:42paused 04:58break 25:00ready

The Tomatino Pomodoro timer for the macOS menu bar: a Time Timer dial counting down a focus session, with the cycle and the controls below it

One glance

The whole Pomodoro session in one dial

The elapsed time fills a scale, so one glance tells you how far in you are. Focus is red, breaks are teal, and the colour alone tells you which phase is running.

Underneath: where you are in the cycle, and how long the next break will be. Everything in the same small window.

Focus & music

Two fewer decisions, every single time

Starting a session turns on a Focus mode and starts your music, shuffled unless you say otherwise. The break turns Focus off and pauses the music. Afterwards it picks up where it left off instead of starting the playlist over.

The music comes from Apple Music, from Spotify, or from a folder of files on your disk that Tomatino plays itself. The folder needs no account and works offline.

This is the part I kept missing, and the reason Tomatino exists at all. The longer story is further down.

2 min in

halfway

almost done

Lives in the menu bar

A menu bar timer: no Dock icon, no window in the way

A capsule in the menu bar, and that is it. Filled while running, outlined while paused, coloured by phase. A glance up tells you the state along with the time.

Click it for the overview. ⌥-click, right-click or a global shortcut start and pause without opening anything.

What else the timer does

Times to fit the work15 to 90 minutes, sessions per cycle, auto-start for sessions and breaks. Or neither, if you would rather start every phase yourself.

Sound and notificationAt the end of every phase, both optional.

Global shortcutStart and pause from anywhere, without switching windows first.

Pauses when the Mac sleepsAnd when the screen locks. Breaks keep running, because a break away from the desk is still a break.

Updates through the App StoreA new version arrives the way every other app's does.

German and EnglishFollowing your system language. Launches at login, if you want it there every morning.

No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no ads. Tomatino makes no network connection at all, so there is nothing it could send anywhere.

The two Focus shortcuts

macOS has no public API for setting a Focus mode; the supported route is the Shortcuts app. So Tomatino runs two shortcuts, and it brings both of them along. If one is missing, the overview and the Focus tab offer a button that adds it, and the Shortcuts app only asks whether to go ahead. So there is nothing to build, and one switch left for you: Control macOS Focus in the settings. Building the two shortcuts by hand works too: one action each, Set Focus on and off.

Both come preset to Do Not Disturb. Open one and pick a different mode, or point the two names in the settings at shortcuts you already have. Tomatino only cares what they are called, never what is in them.

Why I built this

I have never been able to concentrate on one thing for long.

It was never for lack of interest. I would sit down, start, drift off, and an hour later have little to show for it.

The Pomodoro technique was the first thing that changed that for me, because it takes the decision away from me: the timer says when I work and when I stop, and I stopped having to negotiate with myself about it.

What the existing timers were missing was the part that actually protects a session. Starting one means two more things for me every time: turn on a Focus mode so nothing interrupts, and start the music I concentrate to. Two steps at the beginning, two at the end, and every one of them a chance to drift off again. So Tomatino does both itself, and undoes them when the break starts. It brings along what it needs for the Focus part.

What Pomodoro is, and why it helps

Francesco Cirillo came up with it in the late 1980s and named it after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used. Hence the name of this app. The method fits in one line: work for a set time, then take a break, and repeat. Classically 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of break, and a longer break after four rounds.

What makes it work is not the number, but these three things:

Starting gets easier. “Work on this until it’s done” is an open-ended demand and easy to put off. “Work on this for 25 minutes” is a promise you can keep.
The decision to stop is made for you. The timer ends the session, so “just five more minutes” never turns into a whole evening, and a break that belongs to the plan feels like one.
Breaks are part of the plan. They are what makes the next session possible, not a reward you have to earn.

One honest caveat: the 25 minutes are a convention, not a physiological constant. There is good evidence that breaks aid recovery and that attention wanes over long stretches, but no study says the ideal work block is exactly 25 minutes. Take it as a starting point and adjust it to the kind of work you do.

25 or 50 minutes?

Take 25 minutes when starting is the hard part

When you keep putting the task off, when you are tired, when the work is small-grained: email, admin, tidying up. The short block lowers the hurdle. Half an hour is over before the resistance kicks in properly. This is also the length to start with if you have never worked this way.

Take 50 minutes when the work needs a run-up

Programming, writing, design. Anything where you spend the first ten minutes just getting back into where you were. 25 minutes is barely enough to get properly into the problem before the timer goes off, and every interruption costs you that run-up again.

Make it longer if you are annoyed when the timer rings because you were finally in it.

Make it shorter if you feel resistance before you even start.

Tomatino offers 15 to 90 minutes, and the Timer tab shows what a full cycle adds up to before you commit to it.

And if it does not work for you?

Then you have lost at most 25 minutes.

Tomatino is on its way to the Mac App Store.