Boost Focus Timer

A calm, keyboard-friendly focus timer with to-dos, habits, goals and session history. Runs as a Windows desktop app, a web app or a browser extension, and keeps every bit of data on your own device.

• Focus timer with pause, resume, breaks, extend-on-complete and goal history (press ↑/↓ in the goal field).
• Notifications when a focus session or break runs out. The app asks for permission with Chrome's own prompt the first time you open it; Menu → Settings → Notifications shows the current state and asks again if you dismissed the prompt. If nothing appears, allow notifications for your browser in your system settings and turn off Do Not Disturb / Focus.
• Sound themes: Classic (default), Glass, Wood, Singing bowl, Soft, Aurora or Silent, each covering start, finish, break, back to work, pause, resume, the coffee refill and button taps. Preview and pick them in Menu → Settings → Sounds. All sounds are synthesized in the browser.
• Pixel-art progress animations — a coffee cup that fills, a battery that charges, a rocket that lifts off — plus an auto-shuffle option.
• To-dos with time estimates, notes, drag-and-drop ordering, a backlog and archive; start a focus session straight from a to-do.
• Habits with 7- and 30-day grids and notes per day.
• Goals with target dates, comments and archive.
• Focus summary: daily focus chart, metrics, week-over-week comparison, time by tag and an editable session log.
• Boost: a private feed of notes, links, images and videos to keep yourself motivated.
• Configurable keyboard shortcuts for every main action, with an in-app editor (Ctrl+/).
• No account, no server, no tracking. Everything is stored in localStorage on the device you use.

Choose an animation	Plan the day	See your progress

Requirements: Node.js 24 or newer (see .nvmrc) and npm.

git clone https://github.com/ttncode/boost-focus-timer.git
cd boost-focus-timer
npm ci
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. To serve an optimized build instead, run npm run build && npm start.

1. Download Boost.Focus.Timer_<version>_x64-setup.exe from Releases.
2. Run it. Windows may warn about an unknown publisher the first time, because the installer is not code-signed: click More info, then Run anyway. It installs for your account only, so no admin rights are needed.
3. The app opens, adds an icon to the system tray and starts with Windows from then on.

Click the tray icon to bring it back. Closing the window (X) only hides it, so a running session and its notification carry on; to quit, right-click the tray icon → Quit. Turn off Start with Windows in the same menu if you don't want it at sign-in.

To update, right-click the tray icon → Check for updates. The app asks before installing, and does not install while a session is running.

The desktop app starts with empty data; it cannot read what the browser extension or web app stored. To move or back up your data, use Menu → Settings → Export data and Import data.

The extension is the same app packaged for Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera).

npm run build:extension

This writes an unpacked extension to dist/extension/ and a zip to dist/boost-focus-timer-extension-<version>.zip.

1. Open chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions) and turn on Developer mode.
2. Click Load unpacked and select dist/extension.
3. Click the toolbar icon to open the timer in its own popup window (a compact layout of the same app) with a taskbar icon; it remembers its size and position. Use the ⤢ button in its top bar, or Alt+Enter, to open the full page in a tab; an existing tab is focused instead of opening a second one.
4. Optional: assign a global shortcut for Open Boost Focus Timer at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

A session keeps running when the popup closes: reopening it continues the countdown, and the extension shows the "Focus session complete" / "Break is over" notification even while the popup is closed (the end chime only plays if the app is open). Popup and full page share the same data, which lives in the extension's own storage, separate from the web app's. Firefox is not supported yet.

Press Ctrl+/ to open the shortcut list. Click a key to change it, press the new combination, Esc to cancel or Backspace to remove it. Reset All to Default restores everything. Assigning a combination that is already in use moves it to the new action.

Shortcuts without Ctrl, Alt or Meta are ignored while you type in a field. Hover a button to see its current shortcut. On Linux, Chrome reserves Alt+1…8 for switching tabs; rebind those if they clash.

All records — sessions, tags, to-dos, habits, goals, posts and settings — are kept in this browser's localStorage under keys starting with bft:.

• Nothing is uploaded, and there is no sync between browsers or devices.
• Clearing site data for the app (or removing the extension) deletes everything.
• Images or videos attached to Boost posts are shown for the current session only; after a reload the post keeps its text.

Project layout:

src/app/               Next.js routes, root layout, icons and web manifest
src/components/        The app: shell, focus timer, pages, Boost feed, hotkeys
src/components/lib/    localStorage data layer (local-db) and session helpers
extension/             Extension service worker
scripts/               Icon generator and extension build
tests/                 Unit tests

Built with Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS 4, dnd-kit and Recharts.

Personal project, used daily by its author. The coffee-cup animation frames in public/animations/coffee-cup/ are third-party artwork kept for private, personal use only; do not redistribute them. Not affiliated with any company or product of a similar name. There is no open-source license yet, so all rights are reserved; ask before reusing the code.