Free tools
Small things that answer one question each. Every one of them grew out of an article on this site, so every number it gives back can be traced to a sentence we published — and where we’ve estimated something, the tool says so. No sign-up, no account, nothing you type leaves your browser.
Focus, time & studying
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Focus Train
Pomodoro timer
A working Pomodoro timer where the session is a train journey — pick 25, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, board, and watch the route go by while you focus. Runs in the browser, no sign-up. -
Focus Train
Pomodoro study planner
How many sessions does your study block actually hold? Say what you’re working on, how your focus is today and how long you’ve got — get the interval, the sprints and where the long break lands. -
Focus Train
Focus app finder
Which app like Forest actually fits you? Four questions about how focus fails for you — drifting, reaching for the phone, or quitting after one broken session — and it names one of seven, ours only when that’s the honest answer. -
3ThingsPal
ADHD app finder
Which ADHD to-do app fits you? Five questions about where the day breaks — time, capture, overwhelm, starting, sticking, forgetting — and what your last abandoned app failed at, then it names one of eight with its catch attached. -
DuePal
Leave time calculator
What time do you need to leave? Put in when you have to be there, the trip and how long getting ready takes, and it works backwards to the two times worth counting down to — with half again on anything you guessed.
Plants
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Succulent
Succulent watering calculator
Not a watering schedule — succulents don’t have one. It gives you the day to go and feel the soil, based on your pot, light, season and mix. -
Succulent
Succulent light checker
Is that windowsill bright enough, or is your plant stretching for a reason? Rates the light your spot actually delivers and tells you what to change. -
Bonsai
Bonsai watering calculator
How often to go and check the soil, by species, pot size, mix and season — and the two placements where no watering rhythm helps, because the tree is in the wrong place. -
Bonsai
Bonsai care calendar
This month’s jobs for your tree — feeding, pruning, winter preparation — and the month its next repotting window opens. Watering is the one thing it refuses to put on a calendar. -
Bonsai
Bonsai leaf drop checker
The tree, the month and what the fallen leaf looks like: dormancy, a relocation drop, shock, water, light, feed or pests — and the one thing to change. In autumn the answer is often “leave it alone”, and it never says “water more” unless the soil does.
Reptiles
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Beardie Days
Bearded dragon growth check
An age and two weigh-ins in grams, and it reads the direction between them against the published band for that age. Hand it a single weigh-in and it refuses a verdict — one point isn’t a curve, and the chart’s bands are wide on purpose. -
Beardie Days
Brumating, or sick?
Tick what you see, enter the season, the age and two weigh-ins, and it runs them through the brumation-versus-illness table — anything in the wrong column goes to a vet, a clean sweep gets the caretaking routine. It never says “fine”, because you can’t tell that by eye.
Pets
Health & life
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MigrainePal
Weather migraine test
Count four boxes out of your own migraine diary and see whether pressure-drop days genuinely run worse for you — or just feel like they do. If your log is too thin, it says so instead of guessing. -
MigrainePal
Migraine days calculator
Headache days, migraine days, medication days — the three numbers a neurologist reads first, set against the chronic-migraine and medication-overuse lines month by month. Orientation, not diagnosis, and it won’t scale up half a month. -
BucketPal
Life in weeks calculator
Not a countdown. It counts the free weekends and the summers left between now and the horizon you pick — the units a plan is actually made of. -
BucketPal
Bucket list app finder
Four questions — travel or life-wide, shared or private, and what is actually stuck — and it names one of the eight apps in our guides. Ours only when the list has been sitting undated for years; for a shared list it says so and names the social app. -
Declutter
Keep it, or let it go?
Five questions about one sentimental object, and it returns the matching row of our keep / record / release table. It will not tell you to bin anything — and for a recent bereavement it refuses to give a verdict at all. -
Declutter
Declutter app finder
Tick what actually stops you — memories, volume, starting, a house that refills — and it names the kind of app built for it, in order if there is more than one. Ours only for the sentimental pile; with nothing ticked it says a bin bag and a free afternoon. -
MeditationPal
Free meditation app finder
On the App Store “free” only means free to download. Say where your sessions come from, who is sitting and what free has to mean, and it names the app genuinely free at that job — and the one place it stops being free. Ours only for audio you already own; a paid app only when you say you would pay. -
SunshinePal
Vitamin D sun check
Latitude, month, skin type and when you’re actually outside: it returns the published midday minutes, or the reason they don’t apply — a vitamin D winter, a window, a 6pm walk. Never a dose; in winter the answer is food and a supplement, not more time outside.
Coffee
Music & files
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MusicPal
Music format check
Tick the audio files you own — FLAC, ALAC, M4B, the awkward one — and where they live, and it names the offline player whose published list actually covers them. It will hand you a competitor’s name without flinching. -
MusicPal
Music storage calculator
Track count, format, free space. It runs the guide’s storage arithmetic — 4 MB, 10 MB or 30–40 MB a track — and says whether the library fits, fits as a decision, or genuinely doesn’t, with the honest routes for the last case.
Concerts & events
How these get built
Each tool starts as an article. If we’ve written a guide with real numbers in it — how long a bonsai in a small pot goes between waterings, which Pomodoro interval suits which subject — then those numbers are already doing the work, and putting a few questions in front of them saves you reading two thousand words to find the paragraph that applies to you.
That also sets the rule we hold ourselves to: a tool can’t say something the article doesn’t. Our succulent guide argues that watering on a fixed schedule is what kills succulents, so the calculator returns a day to check the soil, never a schedule. Where we’ve had to turn a qualitative sentence into a number, the page says which parts are estimates and links back to where the rest came from.
And some questions get an answer that isn’t a number. Ask the bonsai tool about a juniper on a coffee table and it won’t give you an interval, because there isn’t one that saves the tree. Tell the migraine test your log covers three weeks and it tells you to keep logging — a false answer there is worse than no answer.
Free, and quietly so
There’s no sign-up on any of these, no account, and no data collection: everything is worked out in your browser and forgotten when you close the tab. Each one is made by the same person who makes the apps — if a tool tells you what to do once and the app is what helps you keep doing it, that’s the whole business model, and you’re free to take the answer and leave.
Something you’d like a tool for? Tell us — and the blog is where they all start.