Load today's routine, press start, and Alcove runs each task's intervals, moving to the next task on its own. Your plan, your music and your hours by subject, right there in front of you.
Free during the beta · No card needed · Runs in your browser
A timer in one tab, focus music in another, yesterday's list somewhere in your notes, your flashcards in another app and a spreadsheet to log the hours. By the time it's all lined up, the hour you set aside is already shorter. Alcove keeps the plan, the timer, the sound, your flashcards and your progress in one place, so you can sit down and start.
Alcove handles the timing, the switching between tasks and the sound, and keeps track of where your hours go.
Build a plan from tasks, each with its own number of focus intervals, tags and a note. Save it as a routine and load it again tomorrow in one click: the same study block, without retyping a thing.
Not sure how to break the work down? Open Plan with AI and tell it what you're working toward, how much time you have each day and any deadline. It proposes a routine with tasks, focus intervals and tags.
Work in custom Pomodoro-style intervals, or, if you prefer something more open-ended, use the stopwatch mode. Alcove knows when a task is done and starts the next one automatically.
Want music while you work? Tune in to Lofi/Beats. If music isn't your thing, switch to sounds made for deep work: rain at the window or steady brown noise. The radio plays in the same tab as your timer, with no ads and no recommended videos waiting to pull you away.
Import a deck from Anki, or write your own cards, and link it to a task in your routine. Press start and the cards due today show up beside the timer, scheduled with spaced repetition. The time you spend reviewing counts toward the task's tags like any other focus.
Tag each task from broad to specific, like #university, #calculus and #derivatives. Every focused minute counts toward all three, so your dashboard shows how much went to university as a whole and how much to each subject.
Set a target for a tag, like 5 hours a week on #university, or for all your focus, like 1h 30m a day. Every interval you finish moves the bar forward. A marker shows where you should be by tonight, so by midweek you can tell whether the week is on track.
A heatmap of every focused day, with the time you invested, sessions, intervals and tasks completed.
Any day with 5 minutes of focus counts. Miss one and the count starts again the next time you focus.
Keep showing up and the milestones come to you, each one a badge with levels to climb as you go further. Your profile keeps them next to your streak and your focus time. Follow friends to see the badges they earn and how long they focused.
Alcove is for people who build their own routines and get things done on their own schedule. Here's what a routine can look like.
Medical school and board prep
Developers and indie makers
Civil-service exams
Every feature is open during the beta. When it ends, your 14-day free trial starts right away, with everything included and no card. Your focus history stays yours to see and export either way.
Alcove
Beta$0during the beta
every feature included · no card needed
Join the betaThe short answers about how Alcove works, what it plays and where it runs.
Alcove is a focus timer and task planner in one browser tab. You line up tasks in a routine, work through them in Pomodoro-style intervals or with a stopwatch, and play lofi, rain or brown noise while you work. Your streak and dashboard show how the focused hours add up, per day and per subject. Set a goal per subject and you'll see whether the week is on pace.
A regular Pomodoro timer counts down one interval and forgets what you were working on. Alcove runs a whole plan: each task has its own number of intervals, the timer moves to the next task when one is done, and the plan is saved as a routine you can load again tomorrow. Focus intervals go from 5 to 90 minutes and breaks from 5 to 30, and each routine keeps its own lengths. For work that doesn't fit in intervals, switch to the stopwatch.
Yes. Open Plan with AI on the Focus page and describe your goal, how much time you have each day and any deadline. It proposes a routine with tasks, focus intervals and tags, which you can apply as it is or ask it to change. It sees what you type and the names of your tags, never your saved routines, tasks or notes.
Alcove has three stations: Lofi/Beats for music, and rainy sounds or brown noise for a steady background. They play in the same tab as your timer, with no ads and no video recommendations. Brown noise is generated on your device, so it keeps playing even without a connection. Every track is listed with its artist and license on the music credits page.
Yes. Import a deck from Anki as an .apkg file, or write your own basic, reversed and cloze cards. Link the deck to a task, and when you press start, the cards due today show up beside the timer, scheduled with spaced repetition (FSRS). Review time counts toward the task's tags, goals and streak like any other focus. Imports bring each card's text and formatting; images, sounds and your Anki review history aren't imported yet.
Give each task tags from broad to specific, like #university, #calculus and #derivatives. Every minute you focus on a task counts fully toward each of its tags, so the dashboard shows the time and share behind the whole subject and each part of it over the last 7 days, 30 days, 6 months or year. Pick a tag to see how its time changed day by day or week by week.
On the dashboard, give a tag a weekly target, like 5 hours of #university, or set a daily or weekly target for all your focus. Each goal shows its progress for today or this week, and a weekly goal also shows whether you're on pace for the days you plan to work. Any day with at least 5 minutes of focus counts toward your streak, and days follow your own time zone. If you miss a day, the count starts again the next time you focus. Goals are private, and missing one has no effect on your streak.
Yes. Find people by their username and follow them; there's nothing for them to approve. When someone you follow earns a badge, you'll see it the next time you open Alcove, and each day starts with a short recap of how long some of them focused the day before. People signed in to Alcove can open your profile by your username: it shows your name, your focus time, your streak, your badges and your friends. Your tasks, tags, notes, routines, flashcards and goals stay private, unless you turn on a share link for a routine: anyone with that link can see the routine and copy it until you turn the link off.
Alcove runs in any modern browser on a laptop, tablet or phone, so there's nothing to install. Your account keeps your routines, streak and history in sync across devices, and you can sign up with Google or with an email and password. If the connection drops mid-session, your focus time is saved on the device and syncs when you're back online. Close the tab mid-interval and Alcove reopens your routine on that device, paused where you stopped.
Join the beta, save the routine tonight, and tomorrow it's one click away. No card needed.
One tab. Every focused hour, counted.
