Table of Contents:
Pomotroid
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Creativity & Inventing
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Fit to Purpose
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Availability
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Stability & Bugs
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Continues Development
Summary
Pomotroid is a fantastic open source app for Pomodoro technique. Not having a system tray icon is a negative side, but other than that, the program is great for fulfilling its purpose.
Pomodoro technique is a famous productivity method used by a lot of people to manage their time and divide it between work and breaks. The technique is very simple: Work for 25 minutes straight, but then take a 5 minutes break. This technique was first invented in the 1980s, and has been getting a lot of adaptation ever since.
Now, if you are someone who performs his job using computers, you may need a special application on your system to help you set a timer to run the technique. There are some browser addons for Firefox and Chrome/Chromium for this, but you may would like a system-wide app that does not depend on a browser to run. For this, you can meet Pomotroid.
Pomotroid App Review
Pomotroid is an open source program that allows you to set a Pomodoro timer according to your needs. After 25 minutes (or any other time that you choose), an alarm sound will play to let you know that you should now take a break. When the 5 minutes break is over, another alarm sound will play to let you know.
We like Pomotroid because:
- It has a beautiful user interface.
- Runs as a separate app, not as a browser addon or anything like that. So you can use it all the time when you need.
- Configurable; You can change the number of minutes you want to allocate for work time and break time. You can also set a timer for long breaks, or adjust the maximum number of Pomodoro rounds you want to have.
- It supports desktop notifications, so no matter your desktop environment, it will beautifully display a notification for you whenever the time for the next session has come.
- Allows you to pause/unpause during both work time and breaks.
- Includes beautiful alarm sounds.
- Can run itself automatically after boot.
- Cross-platform: It works on Windows, macOS and Linux, so your workflow won’t be affected if you have multiple working environments.
- The Linux version ships itself as an AppImage, which is a binary format that works on all major Linux distributions without the need to download or install any extra software. You will literally just download 1 file, run it, and the app will instantly open for you ready to use.
- It’s open source (released under the MIT license).
Video Demo
Here’s a video we recorded showing all the app’s options and features:
Installation
As we said, Pomotroid works on Windows, macOS and Linux. You can download the latest release from the GitHub releases page according to the operating system you are using.
For Linux, you’ll have to download the AppImage file. Once downloaded, mark the file as executable and run it:
Then you’ll find the program in your applications menu, ready to use!
Notes and Ideas
One thing to note about the app is that it’s written using JavaScript, mainly using Electron and VueJS. While this is necessary for cross-compatibility, some users find it annoying and somehow resource-intensive to run a lot of Electron apps together on their desktops, especially side by side a browser like Chrome/Chromium. But from our experience, the app’s RAM usage doesn’t exceed 25MB, and does not put any load on CPU, so such issues does not exist here.
Also, the app sadly does not feature a system tray indicator, so you either minimize (and it would still show itself as a minimized window), or you close it completely. A system tray icon, however, could’ve been a better usability option.
One final thing to note: Since the app ships itself in the shape of an AppImage, the app isn’t really “installed” on your system. Instead, it runs directly from your downloads folder, just like a portable .exe
program on Windows. So if you change the location of that file, or if it gets accidentally removed, the app won’t launch from the application menu, and you’ll have to browse your file manager and launch it from there by clicking it.
Conclusion
We have reviewed the Pomotroid app and how it works so far. Whether it fits to your needs or you prefer another app is up to you, but it can be fair to say that the app does its job very well. Very few other open source options do exist.
Do you use the Pomodoro technique? What software do you use to help manage your time with it? We would love to hear about your opinions in the comments below.
Pomotroid
-
Creativity & Inventing
-
Fit to Purpose
-
Availability
-
Stability & Bugs
-
Continues Development
Summary
Pomotroid is a fantastic open source app for Pomodoro technique. Not having a system tray icon is a negative side, but other than that, the program is great for fulfilling its purpose.
With a B.Sc and M.Sc in Computer Science & Engineering, Hanny brings more than a decade of experience with Linux and open-source software. He has developed Linux distributions, desktop programs, web applications and much more. All of which attracted tens of thousands of users over many years. He additionally maintains other open-source related platforms to promote it in his local communities.
Hanny is the founder of FOSS Post.