I searched to do list app with timer and opened five apps that came up: Focus To-Do, Go For It!, TODO Timer - Task Countdown, Task Master, and Todo Today.
All five attach a timer to a task. None of them do the same thing with it once the timer stops.
A to do list app with timer almost always measures one of two things
A to do list app with timer usually splits into one of two jobs: measuring how long you focused, or measuring how little time you have left.
Focus To-Do runs a Pomodoro cycle. You pick a task, work for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, and the app logs the focused time into reports, a Gantt chart, and trend graphs. Go For It! is simpler, a stopwatch you start and stop against a task, with no categories and no tags, just a to-do list, a timer, and a done list. TODO Timer - Task Countdown tracks estimated time against actual time per task, with a persistent countdown notification while the timer runs.
Task Master and Todo Today both use the timer as pressure instead of a stopwatch. Task Master asks for the time you want everything finished by, then calculates whether you are ahead or behind as the clock moves. Todo Today puts a fixed 24 hour countdown on every task: once you start it, you have to finish before the next day, or it expires.
Two different jobs, same timer. One measures how long you worked. The other measures how little time you have left.
None of the five show what happened when the timer stopped
I looked specifically at what each app does the moment a timed task ends, because that moment is where a to do list either closes a loop or just moves on to the next item.
Focus To-Do writes the session into a report: total focused minutes, a trend graph, a Gantt chart. Go For It! moves the task into a Done list you can clear whenever you want. TODO Timer lets you mark the task verified and check it in a history tab. Task Master’s changelog mentions a confirmation step when you complete a task, but the listing does not say what happens after that. Todo Today’s page does not describe post-completion behavior at all, only that it shows progress stats and can notify you before a task expires.
So the common answer across five apps is that the task becomes a number, a line in a list, or an entry in a history tab. None of them show you what you actually did during that time. There is no photo of the thing you cooked, no clip of the stretch routine you finished, nothing that captures the fifteen minutes beyond the fact that fifteen minutes happened.
A timer that feeds something instead of just logging it
I built DreamStore, so I will say that plainly before describing it.
DreamStore’s routine timer works like a stopwatch on a task, similar to Go For It! or TODO Timer. You start a step, it counts, you finish it. The difference is what the finish does. Each completed step grows a small planet on the home screen, called Dream Planet, with a short burst animation the moment you check something off, whether that is a single task or a step inside a timed routine. The app intentionally has no streaks and no counter that resets to zero if you miss a day. Growth is cumulative. A day you skip does not undo a day you did not skip.
You can also attach a photo or a short video to a finished task, so the record of what you did is not just a timestamp. That part is optional, and nothing about the photo gets scored or compared. I wrote more about how that photo attaches after the task, not before it, in an earlier post on to do list apps with photos.
Where this does not fit: DreamStore does not do Pomodoro cycles, estimated-versus-actual time tracking, or deadline pressure like Task Master or Todo Today. If what you want from a timer is a 24 hour countdown that forces you to finish before it expires, this is not that app. It is Android only right now, and the free tier shows ads. An optional Pro subscription removes ads and adds more planet decoration slots, a full year of stats, and extra widget colors. I have not measured whether watching a planet grow keeps people doing tasks longer than a Pomodoro report does. I only know what the five apps above do differently, and what this one does differently from them.
What I checked, and what I did not
As of October 2026, I opened the official app store or product pages for Focus To-Do, Go For It!, TODO Timer - Task Countdown, Task Master: To-Do List/Timer, and Todo Today, and read what each page says about its timer and its post-completion behavior directly from those pages. Notes from that research, including which page said what, are saved separately for this search.
I did not install and run any of the five apps myself, so I cannot confirm that their listings match current behavior exactly, and pricing or features may have changed since each page was last updated.
I do not have usage data showing that a growing planet changes how long someone keeps using a timer compared to a report or a done list. That is a claim about the app’s design intent, not a measured result.