Chronos FAQ

A1: A daily planner that runs in your browser. Each day is drawn as a timeline with what you plan on the left and what you really did on the right, and as a 24-hour dial. You type tasks in plain words, let Plan my day fit them into your free time, keep weekly routines, track time with one tap, work in focus rounds, close each day with a short review and see in Insights where your hours went.

A2: Nothing. It is free, with no registration and no limit on use. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, it is supported by advertising.

A3: No. Open the page in a modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari or Opera) on a computer, tablet or phone. Your planner is kept in that browser, so there is nothing to sign in to.

A4: No. Your tasks, blocks, routines, tracked time, focus rounds and day reviews stay on your device and are never sent to a server. Calendar files you bring in are read on the device too. The page itself loads the site's ads and analytics, as every page on the site does; the Privacy Policy explains those, and what you type in the tool is never part of them.

A5: Yes. On a phone the five views sit in two rows of tabs, the dial and the waiting tasks come first and the timeline below them. To move or resize a block on a touch screen, press and hold it first, then drag.

A6: Chronos does all its work on your device, but the page is not set up to open without a connection. Keep the tab open, or open the page again once you are online; your planner is still there.

A7: A task is something to do that waits until you give it a time. A block is a stretch of a day on the timeline, with or without a task behind it. A routine is a block that comes back every week on the days you choose, such as a run or a weekly review.

A8: A title plus any of these, in any order: a time (10am, 9:30, 14:00, noon, at 6, which means 6 in the evening), a time range (10-11:30, 9am to 5pm, from 14:00 until 15:30), a length (45m, 1h, 1.5h, 1h30, for 2 hours, half an hour), a day (today, tomorrow, day after tomorrow, friday, next friday, in 3 days, next week, 25 oct, oct 25, 25/10, 2026-11-20), a category (#work, or the start of a category name), a priority (!, !! or !!!, or !low, !medium, !high), a due date (by friday, due 1 nov) and a repeat (every day, every weekday, every weekend, every mon wed fri, daily).

A9: A line with a repeat becomes a routine; a line with a time becomes a block on the day; anything else waits as a task. A block with no length gets an hour, a task with no length 30 minutes, and a routine with no time starts at 9:00 for 30 minutes. A block typed with a priority or a due date also gets a task behind it. The words under the box show what will be made before you press Add.

A10: That follows your device's date order the first time, and you can change it in Settings under Typing 5/10 means. Typed dates run from 1970 to 2099; a date without a year that is more than 30 days past means next year.

A11: Drag down the Plan lane on Today or a day on Week: a block of that length opens, ready to be named. A single click or tap opens a one-hour block at that time. Dragging on the Done lane adds time you already spent instead.

A12: Yes. Open the task and type steps under Steps, pressing Enter after each one; tick them as you go. A task holds up to 50 steps, and its row shows how many are done.

A13: It takes the tasks waiting for a time, most pressing first: past their due date, due that day, planned for that day, then by priority, due date and length. Tasks of an hour or more, or marked as needing deep focus, go into your best hours; the rest go into the earliest free time. Nothing changes until you press Place them, and Undo takes the whole plan back.

A14: Your work hours on your work days and your day hours on other days, both set in Settings; you can change them in the Plan my day window for that one plan. Planning today starts from the current time. Times snap to 15 minutes unless you choose 5, 10 or 30 in Settings.

A15: The hours you choose for deep work: morning (from the start of the planned hours to noon), afternoon (noon to 5 pm), evening (from 5 pm) or From my focus, which picks the three hours with the most focus rounds in the last four weeks once you have about two hours of them, and the morning until then.

A16: A few minutes Plan my day leaves free before and after each block it places, so one task does not run straight into the next: none, 5, 10 or 15 minutes. It also keeps that gap around the blocks already on the day.

A17: A task of an hour or more that does not fit in one free stretch is split into parts of at least half an hour, but only when all the parts fit; each part is named, for example (part 1 of 2). Tasks that still do not fit stay waiting and are listed as Does not fit, so you can widen the hours, move something, or try tomorrow.

A18: Yes. Press Place on a waiting task to put it in the next free time that day, or drag it onto the timeline. If the day is full, Chronos offers the next day.

A19: Drag a block to move it, and drag its bottom edge to change its length; on Week you can also drag it to another day. On a touch screen, press and hold first. With the keyboard, choose a block with Tab, then use the up and down arrows to move it, Shift with the arrows to change its length, the left and right arrows to move it to another day on Week, Enter to open it and Delete to remove it.

A20: When you tick it, when you finish the task behind it, or when you tracked at least half of its time. Blocks that are over and were not done show with a dashed edge as missed. Ticking a block that has started and has no tracked time also adds its planned time, up to now, to the Done lane.

A21: The same day as a 24-hour clock with noon at the top: the outer ring is the plan, the inner ring what was done, the hours before your day starts and after it ends are shaded, and a hand points at now. Point at an arc to see what it is, and click it to open it. In the middle, today shows the time and what is on now; other days show their totals.

A22: So that the page stays where it is: the box opens with the current time a third of the way down, and dragging near its top or bottom edge scrolls the box. Taller hours and Shorter hours, at the top of the box, change how much of the day fits.

A23: Blocks stay at their clock times. Tracked time sits at the clock times it started and ended and counts its real length, so on the night the clocks go back an hour, a stretch from 0:30 to 3:00 counts three and a half hours.

A24: Seven days side by side, starting on Monday or Sunday as set in Settings, with your work days unshaded. Each day's head shows its planned time and a bar of how much was done; click it to open that day. A thin strip at the right edge of each day shows the time you tracked.

A25: Open the block on that day and choose Only that day under Save changes for, or drag it to another time. Skip this day takes it off that day only. To change it everywhere, choose Every day it repeats, or edit it in the Routines list.

A26: Yes. The pause button in the Routines list, or the Paused switch in the routine, hides it from your days until you start it again, for example during a holiday. A routine can also have a start and an end date.

A27: Each category can have a goal of hours for the week. The bar shows the planned and the done hours against the goal's mark, and the line under it says how many hours are left to reach it.

A28: The bar under the tabs always shows what is on now: press Track it to time the current block, or Start a timer for anything else; a timer can also start from a task or a block. Stop adds the time to the Done lane; less than a minute is not kept. Starting a new timer stops the one that runs, and a stretch of tracked time is at most 31 days.

A29: Yes. Drag on the Done lane, or press Add time under Tracked time in Insights, and type when it started and ended. Time in the future cannot be added; plan it as a block instead. Every stretch of tracked time can be opened, changed or deleted.

A30: Pick a rhythm on Focus and what you are working on, and press Start. After each round a short break follows, and after a set number of rounds a long one. A soft bell and, if you allow them, a notification mark each change while the page is open. Skip ends a round or a break early, Stop ends the session, and a round cut short is listed as cut short.

A31: 25 minutes of focus and 5 of break with a 15-minute long break after 4 rounds; 50 and 10 with 20 after 3; 90 and 20 with 30 after 2; 52 and 17 with 30 after 3; or your own lengths, from 10 to 120 minutes of focus. These are common ways to work, not rules: pick the one that suits you.

A32: If the end of a round or a break is found more than ten minutes late, Chronos records the round that ended but does not start the next one by itself: it waits with Round 2 is ready or Your break is ready. That way no focus time is counted for hours nobody was there.

A33: For anything that comes up during a round: type it, press Note it and keep going. Each note becomes a task waiting to be placed, listed under Noted during focus until it is done.

A34: It shows the day's planned and done time and the share of planned blocks that got done, then lists the tasks that are not finished: the ones planned that day, due by then or with a block that day. For each one choose tomorrow, back to waiting, it is done or drop it. You can also say how the day felt and write a line for yourself.

A35: For this week, the last 7 or 30 days, or this month: planned against done for each day (as a chart or a table), where your time went by category, a heat map of the hours of the week when you track the most, how long finished tasks took against your estimate, your focus rounds and streak, and how the days felt. Below that is the list of tracked time.

A36: From tasks you finished that had a length and at least 5 minutes of tracked time: for each, the tracked time is divided by the length you planned, and Insights shows the middle value of those ratios. If tasks take you about 1.5 times as long as planned, give them more time when you plan.

A37: Yes. Spreadsheet file, under Tracked time in Insights or in Settings, saves a CSV file with the date, start, end, minutes, what, category, how it was recorded and the task of every stretch. Cells that a spreadsheet would read as a formula start with an apostrophe.

A38: Export your calendar as an .ics file (in Google Calendar: Settings, Import and export; in Outlook: save the calendar), then on Week press Calendar file and pick the file. Timed events from a week ago to two months ahead come in as blocks in a category you choose, at your clock's time, with daily and weekly repeats, skipped days and moved single events. All-day events and monthly or yearly repeats are left out, and events already brought in are not added twice.

A39: On Week press Calendar file, choose this week, the next four weeks or the day shown, and press Save the file. Blocks become events and routines become weekly repeating events with their skipped and moved days. Blocks that came from a calendar file are left out, because they are in that calendar already. Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar open the file.

A40: In this browser on this device, under one entry for this tool; nothing is saved on a first visit until you add or change something. Data from the earlier Chronos app is brought over once. Delete everything, in Settings, removes it after you type DELETE, and the rest of the site is left alone. A private window or cleared browser data starts afresh.

A41: Save a backup in Settings, then Restore it in the other browser. A backup is one file that holds everything; restoring checks every value and replaces what is in Chronos there after you confirm, with Undo right after.

A42: Up to 2,000 tasks, 5,000 blocks, 100 routines, 12 categories, 5,000 focus rounds, 1,000 day reviews and the newest 10,000 stretches of tracked time, in files up to 5 MB. That is years of use for most people; the browser's room for saved data is shared by the whole site, so save a backup now and then.

A43: Yes. While you use the tool and are not typing in a box: N adds something, T goes to today, J and K go to the day or week before and after, 1 to 5 switch views, Space starts or pauses a focus round on Focus, and ? opens the help. On a chosen block, the arrows move it, Shift with the arrows changes its length, Enter opens it and Delete removes it. Esc closes a window.

A44: The Clock has alarms, a countdown timer, a stopwatch and a world clock, but no plan. NoiseHaven plays sounds and has focus rounds of its own to go with them; Chronos's focus rounds count as done time on your day and in Insights. Unplug is about phone screen time and makes a calendar file of a detox plan. Chronos is the planner: a timeline for each day and week, tasks that wait to be placed, routines, a timer, a day review and the insights that compare your plan with what you did.