Why I Built This
As part of my journey learning Python and building real-world tools, I wanted to create something small but useful something that solves a real problem I face daily: staying focused.
The Focus Timer App is inspired by the Pomodoro technique. It helps you stay in the zone by timing work sessions and encouraging intentional breaks.
I built it with two parts:
- A Command-Line Timer using Python
- An Optional HTML/CSS UI for visual countdown
Let me walk you through it.
How It Works
🟢 From the terminal, the app prompts:
“How many minutes would you like to focus for?”
You type 25
(or any number), and the countdown begins right in your terminal.
Here’s what that looks like:

As time ticks down, it shows the exact time you’ll be done and updates the seconds live.
When time’s up, you get a message:
âś… Time’s up! Take a short break or start another session.

The Browser UI
For anyone not comfortable in the terminal—or if you just like visuals—I also created a super lightweight HTML version.
Just double-click ui.html
or run open ui.html
on Mac, and you’ll see this:

It starts at 25:00
and counts down when you click “Start.” Simple and clean.
Folder Structure
bashCopyEditfocus_timer_app/
│
├── timer.py # Python CLI logic
├── ui.html # Lightweight browser UI
├── style.css # Styling for the UI
└── README.md # Project summary for GitHub
What I Learned
âś… Handling user input and validating it
âś… Using time.sleep()
, datetime.now()
and timers in Python
âś… Building responsive UI with just HTML/CSS
âś… How to break a project into small, testable parts
âś… Clean terminal output with emojis and formatting
Tools & Tech Used
- Python 3.11
- Terminal (macOS)
- Sublime Text
- HTML/CSS
- Git + GitHub
Additional Learning Resources
Here are 3 beginner-friendly resources I recommend if you’re just getting into this:
- Python
datetime
Module Tutorial - HTML/CSS Visual Timer Tutorial on YouTube
- Emojis in Python CLI (for fun visuals)
Final Thoughts
This was a fun and fast project, took me under an hour to build, test, and push to GitHub.
You can view the full source code here:
🔗 GitHub Repo – Focus Timer App
Let me know if you try it out or customize it into something even better!