BetterPomo

A shared Pomodoro/Timer platform with everything you will ever need Analytics, to-do list, group chats, time running even when the app is closed The only study/work app you will ever need

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Inspiration

BetterPomo started with a simple problem: focusing with other people shouldn't require five different apps.

If you want to study with friends or work with a remote team, you usually need one app for the timer, another for chat, another for music, and something else for tasks and time tracking. Even after setting everything up, it still doesn't feel like everyone is working together.

I wanted to create one place where people could focus, work, and track their time together without worrying about the tools.

BetterPomo brings all of that into a single platform. It works for a student tracking study hours, a group preparing for an exam, friends keeping each other accountable, or a company that wants a clearer picture of how its team spends focused work time.

The original idea came from a personal experience. After moving to the United States, my girlfriend and I started studying together from different places. We couldn't find one app that had everything we needed, so I decided to build it.

What it does

BetterPomo is a shared focus and time-tracking platform.

Users can create a room, share a six-character code, and start focusing together directly in the browser. Everyone sees the same timer and session state, so the group always knows when it is time to focus, pause, or take a break.

BetterPomo includes:

  • Shared Pomodoro and running timers
  • Live rooms for friends, study groups, and teams
  • Built-in chat
  • Private notes and to-do lists
  • Focus sounds and custom sound mixes
  • Session history
  • Personal and team analytics
  • Active time and completed task tracking
  • Profiles, friends, and group conversations
  • Progress sharing

For students, BetterPomo makes it easier to understand where their study time goes and stay consistent with a group.

For teams and companies, it creates a shared place to work together and understand focused work time. Companies such as Kalify Inc can use it to organize work sessions and track progress without needing a complicated set of tools.

BetterPomo also has a social side. Users can share their sessions and results, similar to how people share workouts on Strava. The difference is that BetterPomo is built around studying, working, and making progress together.

How we built it

We built BetterPomo as a browser-first platform. There is nothing to download, and joining a room only takes a code.

The biggest part of the product is keeping everyone in sync. When the host starts, pauses, or changes the timer, every participant needs to see the same state. BetterPomo also records the real duration of each session, active focus time, completed tasks, and the people who participated.

The platform combines real-time rooms, chat, timers, sounds, tasks, history, analytics, profiles, and social features in one experience. Each feature is connected, but we worked hard to keep the interface simple.

During Build Week, we used Codex with GPT-5.6 throughout the development process. Codex helped us plan features, work through technical decisions, write and review code, find edge cases, debug problems, and improve the user experience.

It allowed us to move faster while still paying attention to the small details that make BetterPomo feel reliable and easy to use.

Challenges we ran into

Real-time synchronization was one of the hardest parts.

A timer seems simple until several people are connected at once. Users can pause, reconnect, change modes, or temporarily lose their internet connection. The room still needs to show the correct time for everyone.

Another challenge was bringing many features together without making BetterPomo feel crowded. Chat, sounds, notes, tasks, analytics, and social features are useful, but the main purpose of the app is still focus. We had to make sure the platform helped people concentrate instead of giving them another distraction.

We also needed to design BetterPomo for very different users. A student working alone has different needs from a study group or a company team. The challenge was supporting all of them while keeping the experience familiar and simple.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that BetterPomo has grown from a simple shared timer into a complete focus platform.

People can study alone, work with friends, join a group, track their progress, or use it with a professional team. They don't need to switch between several apps to do it.

We're also proud that the platform tracks more than just the length of a timer. BetterPomo records active time, tasks, session history, and the people who worked together. This gives users a much more useful picture of their time and progress.

The visual identity is also personal to me. The BetterPomo logo was inspired by a vintage Omega Constellation watch that I inherited from my father. It has been in my family for three generations. Since BetterPomo is built around time, it felt right to connect its identity to something that represents time in my own family.

What we learned

We learned that productivity is not only about counting minutes.

People focus better when they feel that someone else is working with them. A shared room can create accountability, even when everyone is in a different city or country.

We also learned that making something feel simple takes a lot of work. Synchronization, reconnection, privacy, analytics, and communication all need to work in the background so users don't have to think about them.

Most importantly, we learned that one platform can serve many different kinds of people if it is built around a clear need. Students, friends, couples, remote workers, and companies all want a better way to spend and understand their time.

What's next for BetterPomo

We want BetterPomo to become the best place to focus, study, and work together.

Our next steps include improving team workspaces, expanding analytics, making progress easier to share, adding more social features, improving sound customization, and bringing the complete experience to mobile devices.

We also want to give companies better ways to organize shared sessions and understand focused work while keeping tracking clear and respectful.

BetterPomo will continue to grow, but the main idea will stay the same: one simple place where people can focus together, track their time, manage their session with notes or music, and be proud of the work they completed.

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