PandaBreak
A pomodoro that lets you earn your breaks.
Submitted for review. Drop us a line if you'd like a heads-up when it lands.
Most pomodoro timers hand you a break because a bell went off. PandaBreak gives you break time in proportion to the work you actually did — a minute banked for every five worked — and then lets you spend it whenever you want.
Try it
This is the plugin's own clock running in your browser, keys and all. Press Work to start, Break to spend what you've banked, Lunch to freeze the lot.
Press the keys. Running at 60× — one pomodoro plays out in 25 seconds.
Four keys, one session
Every key is a view onto the same clock, so it doesn't matter which one you press — only one mode is ever running.
Work Time
The whole cycle: work done plus break spent on it. The sub-line splits it back out, 32:30 + 1:30.
- Tap
- Start or pause work
- Hold
- Reset the session
Pomodoro
The 25:00 countdown. Past zero it keeps going and shows overtime in amber instead of stopping.
- Tap
- Start or pause
- Hold
- Start a fresh countdown
Break Budget
Break you have earned and not yet spent. Overdraw it and the number goes red — that's the point.
- Tap
- Spend it; tap again to resume work
- Hold
- —
Advanced Break
Lunch, a meeting, the school run. Sits outside the system: nothing accrues, nothing drains.
- Tap
- Freeze everything; tap again to resume
- Hold
- —
How the numbers work
Break accrues continuously
One minute of break per five minutes worked. A full 25 minute pomodoro banks 5:00. Stopping at twelve minutes banks 2:24 — never handed out in lumps at the end.
A pomodoro may overrun
When you're in flow, a bell shouldn't stop you. Past zero the countdown turns amber and keeps counting up. Overtime still earns break, because it is still work.
Breaks hold the pomodoro
Starting a break freezes the countdown exactly where it was and drains the budget in real time. Ending one puts you straight back to work.
Lunch is outside the system
The advanced break freezes everything and tracks its own time separately. It never touches your budget, and it never enters the cycle total.
Time comes from the clock
Every number is settled from wall-clock timestamps rather than counted ticks, so a busy machine, a sleeping laptop or a plugin restart doesn't drift your session.
Settings
Select any PandaBreak key in the Stream Deck app to open its inspector.
- Pomodoro length
- Default 25 minutes. Anything from 1 to 180.
- Work per break minute
- Default 5 — five minutes of work per minute of break.
- Break overdraft
- Whether the budget may go negative, or the break stops at zero.
- Auto-reset after
- Hours of inactivity before a forgotten session starts fresh. Default 8.
- Tile label
- On the Advanced Break key: LUNCH, MEETING, whatever that key is for.
Requirements
- Stream Deck app
- 7.1 or newer
- Devices
- Any Stream Deck with keys — Neo, MK.2, XL, Mini, +, Studio, Mobile
- Platforms
- macOS 12+ and Windows 10+
- Keys needed
- Four, on any page or folder
What it doesn't do
No account, no sign-in, no network calls, no analytics. Your session lives in Stream Deck's own settings on your machine, and nowhere else.
Support
Something broken, or an idea for the next version? Write to us and you'll get a human reply.
Email supportTo make it quick, include:
- •Your Stream Deck app version and operating system
- •Which device you're on (Neo, MK.2, XL …)
- •What you pressed and what you expected to happen
- •The plugin log, if you can get to it — see below
Finding the log
Stream Deck keeps a log for every plugin. On macOS it's under ~/Library/Application Support/com.elgato.StreamDeck/Plugins, on Windows under %appdata%\Elgato\StreamDeck\Plugins — open the de.7bp.pandabreak.sdPlugin folder and grab the newest file in logs/.
Version
First release. Four keys, configurable pomodoro length and accrual ratio, session persistence across restarts.
de.7bp.pandabreak