Focus Fern: a focus timer where every finished session grows a plant

01  What it is

Focus Fern is a pomodoro-style focus timer that runs in a browser tab. You pick a session length, press start, and work while a dial counts down against a quiet scene — a soft gradient sky, a low sun, a few drifting motes. When the focus phase finishes you get a gentle chime and a new plant sprouts in your garden. Come back tomorrow and there is another one.

That is the whole idea: a timer that leaves something behind. The clock alone is not much of a reward, and a to-do list is not much of a reward either — a garden you can see filling up is. It is free, there is no account, and there is nothing to install. Open the page and you can start a session in about two seconds.

The honest comparison: Forest does the planted-reward loop beautifully but as a paid mobile app behind an install and a login. The free browser timers are plain countdowns with no reward at the end. This is the free browser one that has the reward loop, plus a card you can actually show someone.

02  The timer keeps honest time when you leave the tab

The countdown is computed from the wall clock rather than by subtracting a tick every second. That sounds like an implementation detail and it is not: naive web timers drift, and they freeze entirely when a browser throttles a background tab or a phone locks the screen. This one asks the clock how much time has passed, so the number on screen is right when you come back — and a session that ran out while the tab was hidden, or while the laptop was shut, is credited the moment you return.

Pause and Resume do what you expect: paused time is not counted against the phase, so an interruption costs you the interruption and nothing more. Reset returns the current phase to its start and credits nothing at all — there is no partial credit for a focus session you abandoned at 24 minutes of 25. That is deliberate. A plant means a session really finished.

Session lengths are 25/5, 50/10 or 15/3 minutes of focus and break, or a custom pair anywhere from 5 to 90 minutes of focus and 1 to 30 minutes of break. The break starts on its own and counts down like the focus phase, so you do not have to remember to take it — and the break grows nothing.

03  What actually grows, and what does not

One completed focus session is one plant. Breaks grow nothing, paused sessions grow nothing, and a session stopped halfway grows nothing. When a plant appears it is drawn from scratch: a seed is mixed from the session's position in your history and the minute it finished, and that seed decides everything about the plant — its species, its leaf colour, how many fronds it has, which way it leans, whether it carries a tiny bloom. The same seed always produces the same plant, so your garden looks identical every time you reload it.

There are five kinds in the mix: a fern, a leafy sprout, a clover, a plump succulent rosette, and a tulip that may or may not be flowering. Nobody picks; the garden decides. Longer sessions grow taller, fuller plants, and that effect stops growing at a 60-minute session — a 90-minute block is not worth more than an hour to the plant.

The garden shelf draws your most recent 80 plants and tells you how many are growing beyond it ("+12 more growing beyond the shelf"). Your all-time totals count every session regardless of what is drawn. Above the garden, four numbers keep score: day streak, sessions today, sessions this week, and total hours focused.

04  The streak is what turns a timer into a habit

A streak counts consecutive local calendar days on which you finished at least one focus session. Local days, not UTC — a session at 11pm belongs to the evening you actually had. It stays shown as alive through the day after your last session, so it does not read zero at breakfast just because you have not started yet. Miss a full day and it resets, and the next session you finish starts a new one at one. There is no streak freeze and no repair: that is the point of it.

Length is not the test; showing up is. A single 15-minute session keeps the streak alive exactly as well as a 50-minute one, which is what makes the streak survivable on a bad day. "This week" is a rolling seven days including today rather than a calendar week, so a Sunday session does not disappear at midnight. If you want one honest tip from the mechanics: start shorter than feels heroic, because the finished session is worth more than the abandoned one.

05  The garden card, and what it is not

Tap "Share your garden" and the app draws a 1080×1350 portrait image on an offscreen canvas. Your all-time hours are the big number; below it sit your day streak, your total sessions and your sessions this week; below that is a strip of your twelve most recent plants; the site address runs along the bottom. Portrait because the people who want this card are posting to a story.

Every string on it is generated from your own numbers. There is no text field, so you cannot type a caption onto the card — and it also cannot overstate your hours, because nobody typed them. On a phone the Share button opens your device's own share sheet, with the image attached where the platform accepts files; on a desktop, where there is no share sheet, it copies a link along with a generated line about your streak instead; and Download saves the PNG either way. The button stays disabled until you have grown at least one plant, because there is no card for an empty garden.

It is a screenshot, not a leaderboard. No ranking to climb, no profile, no one else's history in it.

06  What it is not, and who it suits

Everything lives in your browser's local storage on your own device. That is what buys you the no-signup part, and the cost is real: your garden, streak and settings do not follow you to another browser or another phone, and clearing your browsing data deletes the garden with nothing to restore it from. There is no sync and no backup. If you want your focus history on three devices, this is the wrong tool and a signed-in app is the right one.

It is also a timer and not a task manager: no to-do list, no project labels, no weekly report, no time tracking you can bill against. It counts finished focus sessions because that is the one thing the garden is made of.

It is free and ad-supported, with a single ad slot below the garden — never over the dial, the scene, your plants or the card. It is built phone-first: the layout fits a portrait screen, taps are thumb-sized, there is a dark theme that follows your system setting, and the ambient motions stop if your system asks for reduced motion. It suits anyone who wants a calm countdown with a visible reason to come back tomorrow, and it is honest about what it will not do for you.

07  Questions people ask

Is Focus Fern free, and do I need an account?

Free, and no account. There is no sign-up, no email and no profile, and nothing to install. The site is ad-supported — one ad slot below your garden, never over the timer, the scene, your plants or the share card.

Does the timer keep running if I switch tabs or close my laptop?

Yes. The countdown is computed from the real clock rather than counted down tick by tick, so it stays accurate while the tab is backgrounded or the screen is locked. A focus session that ran out while you were away is credited the moment you come back to the page.

How does the focus streak work, and when does it reset?

A streak counts consecutive local calendar days with at least one completed focus session. It stays shown as alive through the day after your last session; miss a whole day and it resets — the next session you complete starts a new streak at one. There is no streak freeze, and a break does not count toward it.

Why do my plants look different, and why are some bigger?

Each plant is drawn procedurally from a seed derived from when its session finished and where it sits in your history, so the five kinds — fern, sprout, clover, succulent and tulip — appear in a mix nobody chooses, and the same plant always looks the same on every reload. Longer focus sessions grow taller, more mature plants, with the effect capped at a 60-minute session.

Can I sync my garden between my phone and my laptop?

No. Your garden, streak and settings are stored only in the browser you used, on that device. Nothing is sent to a server, so there is nothing to sync — and clearing your browsing data clears the garden with no way to restore it.

Does a break grow a plant, or count toward my streak?

No. Only a completed focus session grows a plant and counts toward your totals and streak. Breaks run down on their own so you take them, but they credit nothing, and a focus session you reset halfway credits nothing either.

08  More from the shelf

• Lexicon — Tap the words you know. Get your number.
• Countmark — Count down to every big day.
• Tilewright — Draw seven tiles. Outword the AI.
• Yearmark — The year you were born, as a poster.

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