# Studying

Planner's study tools help you get the work done once it's planned.

## Study timer

Start the study timer from the sidebar, or with Start on a session in Today's Plan. Pick a preset or your own length, and what you're working on: one list shows your open work by class, starting with whatever is due next, plus general study for each class. The timer shows on all your devices, so you can start it on your laptop and pause it from your phone, and your minutes only count once.

To stop early, End logs the minutes you studied and Discard throws them away, with an Undo. Breaks don't count as study time. Timer settings, like focus and break length and the alarm sound, are in Settings, under Timer.

## Focus sounds

The timer can play rain, waves or brown noise while you work. It goes quiet for breaks and when time's up.

Pick Spotify instead and paste a link to a playlist, album or song in Settings, then Timer. It opens in Spotify when a focus timer starts. In the Mac app, Spotify or Apple Music plays when a focus timer starts and pauses when you pause, take a break or finish, with no sign-in. The first time, your Mac asks if Planner may control the app.

## Block distracting sites

With the Severn Planner Chrome extension on your computer, a focus timer can keep sites like YouTube, TikTok and Reddit closed until it ends or your break starts. It's off until you turn it on in Settings, then Timer, and you pick the sites. The Mac app can block apps and sites too, under Mac Settings.

## Focus Mode

Click Focus on the Assignments page for a quieter view of what's left to do. Beside your list, it shows today by time: study sessions, goal blocks and calendar events, with a line at now. When a session is about to begin, its block shows Start.

## Exam mode

Turn on Exam mode in Settings, then Automation, and an Exams page appears. Add an exam with the class and date, or pick a test already in Planner. Before anything is booked, you see the study plan: a review for each topic, a practice test two days out and a recap the day before, under a daily limit and around your other exams.

Start studying runs the timer. After each topic, Got it or Shaky decides whether it gets another pass. Missed sessions can be planned again from today.

## What I missed

Once a test or quiz is over, open it and choose What I missed to write down what you got wrong, like "Forgot the chain rule on implicit differentiation." It works like class notes, with the same markdown: bold, lists and task boxes. Nothing asks you for it when a grade comes in. It's there when you want it.

When you set up an exam in Exam mode, tick Include previous reported mistakes under the study plan. The recap the day before then lists every What I missed note from that class this term, as a checklist. Tick each one off as you go over it.

## How estimates work

How long Planner expects something to take comes from your own times for that kind of work in that class, so Bio labs and Bio quizzes each keep their own number. Recent times count most, and one odd night can't swing it. Until you've reported a few, it leans on a starting guess. Finish something whose sessions all ran on the timer, and that time is counted for you.

The day after a test or quiz, your dashboard asks whether you studied enough. Your answer changes how much prep time the next one in that class gets.