Focus – Productivity Timer App Reviews

I’ve tried other productivity timers: pomodoro time, flat tomato, pomodoro keeper, 30/30. FOCUS has adapted well to my needs. I like that it combines tasks and time. I like that it includes both visual and number representation of time. Unless I have over looked it, I would encourage the boys to add interval sounds. As someone who has ADHD, it helps to not only have a timer, but to have one that helps you know the passing of time.

Focus is a minimalist Pomodoro app with a sophisticated menu bar dropdown and excellent Handoff support. In terms of functionality, I particularly like the ability to lengthen a session by 5-10 minutes, pause a session, and add/check off tasks. On the other hand, its statistics view is not particularly helpful, since it does not associate completed Pomodoros with specific tasks, and it does not allow me to estimate the number of Pomodoros per task. While I enjoy the flexibility of its interface, I’ve returned to another Pomodoro app that has these features.

…and I’ve tried several. Including an actual pasta timer. I love that the app looks so clean and streamlined. Everything is in one place and you can hide whatever you’re not using (in my case, the “task view”), so you can focus (no pun) only on what’s useful to you. For me, this means the actual timer and the activity view. I also really like how the app keeps such good track of your stats: you can see how well you’re doing, how well you did yesterday, last week, etc. You can also see when each session started and ended, which is great if you’re doing long, 50-minute sessions, which you sometimes pause. There’s also a color-coded system (with red, yellow and green lights) that relies on the number of sessions you set for yourself for the day, and positively reinforces your efforts if you’re as scatterbrained as I am. Another great little detail is the customization of the menu bar, wherein you may have a countdown clock represented by numbers and/or by a small circle (or you can just disable it if that’s not your thing). It’s a very unobtrusive way to see, at a glance, how much time you have left in the current pomodoro. In sum, thank you for this!

Using the app for a while now and I really like the latest update. It’s good to see regular updates and improvement. The menu bar item has become way more useful and now I can see my progress in a widget in the Today view. Global hotkeys are also great.

I came from Pomodoro Time Pro and it’s been a way better experience! The syncing between iOS and OS X is much better through iCloud. I use a separate task manager, so entering tasks in both applications is a bit redundant. I wish Focus could sync with Flagged tasks in OmniFocus, but I don’t see that ever being a reality.