Tempus

Whether you find the classic Pomodoro technique to be useful and suitable for improving your productivity or not, proper time management is probably the most important aspect worth looking into.

That’s exactly why you might find Tempus, a straightforward but very efficiently tray application, to be quite interesting. By default, this free, and open source application is configured to act like a typical Pomodoro app, with the traditional work sessions of 25 minutes, with a break time of 1 min between the so-called “pomodoros.”

If this seems a bit too dull, fret not, as one of the best aspects of Tempus is represented by its numerous configuration options. In short, you can change anything from the work time, the break time, the number of cycles, and the overall delay between them.

The app allows you to input exactly for how long you want to work in sessions, or to work until a designated time of day. You can also create all sorts of goals, as the app automatically counts how many pomodoros you finished and provides you with detailed and insightful statistics regarding your productivity.

Once installed, the application lives in your computer’s tray, from where you can access its main interface with a single mouse click via the designated icon. The app displays the number of completed pomodoros in the top-left corner of its compact UI and has a unique way of displaying the progress of your task, either in percentage or in typical numbers.

By clicking the sprocket-shaped button on the upper-right corner of the GUI, you can enable or disable system notifications, the launch at login option, and activate options such as auto-hide window on task start, and auto show window on task finish. Interestingly enough, there’s also an option that allows you to move position the app’s window anywhere on your computer screen, but it does require you to restart the app afterward.

Everything about the app, from the way it looks, to the way it opens and closes menus feels modern and, thanks to the black-themed GUI, it looks right at home on any Windows 10 workstation.

It boasts an interesting and very beginner-friendly kit and enough configuration options to appeal to most users out there. Tempus is a very good app of this kind that should find its way onto computers of users who are generally concerned about tracking their working time.