Set up a Pomodoro timer in OBS

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Step by step

// How it works

1. 01

   Set it up in the Config Hub

   Open the Config Hub, pick the Focus Room, enter your Twitch channel and click Next. Under Look and position you can already choose whether the cards sit on the left or the right, whether your own goals get a card of their own, and whether floating bubbles with your viewers' avatars drift across the screen. Set the language to English in the display step. Tick the terms of use, choose a folder and save. The hub needs Chrome or Edge.

2. 02

   Add it as a browser source in OBS

   In OBS click the plus under Sources, then Browser. Tick Local file, choose the widget.html in the games/coworking folder, width 1920, height 1080, OK. The Focus Room is a transparent layer over your scene, only the timer and task cards show. If any of these moves trips you up, the general guide to browser sources walks through them in detail.

3. 03

   Add the director's panel as an OBS dock

   You run the Focus Room from the director's panel, a second page next to the overlay called host.html. It does not go into a scene, it goes into the OBS window as a dock. In the hub's OBS step, enter the path to your folder once, and the panel's address appears there ready to copy. In OBS open Docks in the menu bar, then Custom Browser Docks (up to OBS 29 it sits under View). Enter a name, paste the address from the hub, Apply. Do copy it from the hub: dock and source only find each other when both addresses have the same form.

   

4. 04

   Start and run the timer

   Under Timer in the panel pick a length: 25 and 5 minutes, 50 and 10, or 90 and 15. Then Start focus. A session has four focus blocks by default with a break between each, and the dots under the clock show which one is running. Pause holds the clock, Resume carries on, and the P key does the same while the dock has focus. Skip ends the current block, +5 min extends it. New session clears the board and asks once before it does. Your mods can run the timer from chat too: !timer 25/5/4 starts 25 minutes of focus, 5 minutes of break and four blocks, plus !pause, !resume and !skip.

5. 05

   The task list in chat

   Every viewer posts a goal with !task, for example !task read chapter 3. Several at once work with a comma: !task emails, workout, vocab. !done ticks off the newest open goal, !done 2 the second one. Finished goals stay on the board struck through, and the bottom card counts what the whole chat got done today. !edit 2 new text changes a goal, !remove 2 deletes it, !focus 1 highlights the one someone is working on right now. The commands match what most co-working streams use, so your chat has nothing new to learn.

6. 06

   Your own goals and moderation in the dock

   Add your own goals in the panel under My tasks, without typing into your own chat. The check mark ticks one off, the cross deletes it. Below that are the tasks from chat, where you can tick off or delete a line that does not belong on stream. Clear done takes every finished goal off the board and leaves the open ones. In chat, mods do the same with !cleardone, !clear for every task and !adel name for one viewer's tasks.

7. 07

   Look and position on screen

   Under Look in the panel you switch between four designs: Aurora and Nebula are dark, Kawaii and Sakura are light and playful. Under Position you move every card to the left or the right. To place cards freely, do it right in OBS: right-click the source, Interact, then drag each card where you want it. The position survives a restart. Reset positions in the panel brings every card back. Whatever you pick in the dock stays until you change the same setting in the hub.

Frequently asked

// In short