Left / Pomodoro timer for iPhone

A Pomodoro timer for your iPhone, with a Live Activity and a widget

The Pomodoro technique is simple: work for a set time, take a short break, and after a few rounds take a longer one. Left’s Focus runs that rhythm on your iPhone. It starts at 25 minutes of focus, 5 minutes of break and a 20-minute long break after four sessions, every length is yours to change, and the countdown stays on your Lock Screen in a Live Activity and in a widget, so you never have to keep the app open.

The default Pomodoro cycle

Open Focus in Left, choose the phase you want from the menu at the bottom, and tap Start. Pause and Resume keep your place, Reset restarts the current phase from its full length, and Skip or End moves on to the next phase and saves the time you actually focused.

Set your own durations

Twenty-five minutes is a starting point, not a rule. Focus sessions, short breaks and long breaks can each be anything from 1 to 60 minutes, and the long break can come after 1 to 12 focus sessions. Change them in Settings → Focus, from the clock button in the Focus screen, or, before a session starts, by swiping up or down on the Digital or Pulse timer or dragging around the Clock dial.

New lengths apply to the next phase, never to a timer that is already running. If a session needs more time, the + button extends the current phase by 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, up to 60 minutes in total.

Four ways to watch the time

Open the display options menu at the top right of Focus to choose how the timer looks:

• Digital: large numbers. This is the default.
• Clock: an analogue dial with a hand and a wedge showing the time left.
• Squares: one square for every minute of the phase, draining one minute at a time.
• Pulse: the numbers over a soft glow that drifts and breathes in the colour of the phase, orange for focus and blue for breaks.

Under the timer, a strip of small bars shows today’s focus and break sessions at the length they actually ran, the phase in progress, and what is left before the next long break. The same strip appears in the widget and the Live Activity.

Keep the timer on your Lock Screen

While a session is running or paused, Left shows a Live Activity: on the Lock Screen it shows the phase, how many sessions you have done today, a large countdown and the day strip. In the Dynamic Island it appears in compact, minimal and expanded forms. The countdown runs on a system timer, so it keeps ticking while Left is closed. Turn it off under Settings → Focus → Live Activity.

The Focus widget comes in small, medium and large sizes for the Home Screen, and in circular and rectangular sizes for the Lock Screen. The Home Screen sizes show the phase, the countdown and the day strip, and those sizes and the rectangular Lock Screen widget have Start and Pause or Resume buttons that work without opening the app. In the widget’s settings you can pick its background and whether it summarises today, the phase or your focus sessions. The step-by-step guide to adding a Left widget is in how to add a Left widget to your Lock Screen.

What happens when time ends

A phase notification tells you when a session or break is over. It is on by default and needs permission to send notifications. After that, you choose:

• By default, the next phase is ready and waits for you to tap Start.
• Continue automatically: Left moves straight into the next focus or break phase, with no Start tap needed.
• Keep going when time ends: the timer counts up past zero until you skip to the next phase, for the day you are in the middle of something good.

See your day and your week

Tap My focus to review your last 7 days, with total focused time, today, your daily and per-session averages, your best day in 14 days and your focus-to-break ratio. A 14-day chart, a focus and breaks view and a six-week trend show the pattern, and the list of sessions lets you correct a session’s start or end time or delete one that should not count.

What needs Left Premium

Left is free to download. Focus is part of Left Premium. Prices are shown in the app before you buy.

Looking for something different from a timer? Left also counts what is left of your day, year and life, and the days since a habit or a streak began. Start from the Left home page.

Questions