Focus Friend, by Hank Green

this app has helped me a lot in getting more productive, and i hope to see expansions later down the line with more rooms and features! personally i think it would be useful to have a stopwatch option, maybe it rounds down to the minute you stop at. sometimes it’s hard to decide how long i want to work for, or i’ll set a timer for 5 minutes and forget about it, then work a lot longer after it finished. not sure how hard this is to implement but it would also be cool to be able to move the furniture around or have different options for the layout

I have been using the Forest app to help with distractions. I like how this app creates a more incentive of decorating your place in exchange for your attention. I hope it expands to allow for different categories of why you’re focusing as I like to use it for work and for reading purposes. I would like to see how much i have focused on reading vs work. As this is a soft launch, I hope they add on more rooms and then eventually you could create houses or anything additional to keep the momentum going. With new additions and improvements, I’m sure this will be my go to deep focus app!

Very cute and so far pretty effective for me. Hoping the team continues to add more decor/ items to trade in my socks and scarves for!

I love this app. I have been using it for only a day and I love it. I spend too much time mindlessly scrolling, mostly tik tok, instead of doing things I actually like to do. Just using this app for one day has cut my screen time in half. I love my little bean. I love earning socks and buying decorations. I love that, unlike some other focus apps I’ve tried, it’s not a hard block. You use your screen time settings to determine what apps are blocked during the focus time. That way I can block all the mindless scrolling apps but if I need to google something, set an alarm, answer a call, or put on some music, I can do that without stopping my little bean from knitting. I can’t wait to see how they expand on this. I feel like there’s so much room for growth. I would love the ability to buy more rooms and build a full house for my bean. Pets would be awesome, I want my bean to have a little friend with them lol I think it would also be cool if the timer would count up after you’ve hit your time. I would get so busy actually doing stuff that I forget to go back and start a new timer. All in all, this app is better than expected. I will be purchasing the pro version when I get paid next 😊

I work nights and have a hard time calming my thoughts down before I go to sleep. I usually check my email, my messages, my calendar, shop, catch up on the news, and so on. So I have been using this to help me sleep. I block my apps, set it for an hour, and I’ve been falling asleep quicker without all the temptation. I hope this app continues to push out updates and possibly balances the cost of items because it wouldn’t take long to fully furnish the little room. Maybe clothing could be an option?

I just don’t get it. It feels like there aren’t enough options for types of beans or decorations, let alone how many things are paywalled. I wonder if it would be better I could have multiple beans for my different tasks, or if there was a way to add bean-friends so I could coordinate co-working with friends and see our beans co-knitting.

It does what it’s supposed to do, is adorable and cozy, and I especially like that furniture from different sets can still go well together.

I thought the app was really cute and used it for a bit but the first time I used Deep Focus, it locked into Deep Focus and wouldn’t come out, even when I toggled the setting off. I couldn’t use any of the apps on my phone, even after turning off Deep Focus, closing the app, or restarting my phone. Ended up having to delete the app.

It’s been working swell for me! I’d like to see more though. Expansions like more rooms would be nice as others have mentioned. Conversion of socks to scarves was an awesome idea someone else mentioned. Personally it’d be really cool to have a system of collectable pets (maybe obtained via gambling some socks/scarves like gacha machine-esqu style). If if there wasn’t a system in place for that, it’d be really hype to have critters. And maybe a white board that the user can draw on would be a sick idea. Interactable stuff is very enticing.

I’m incredibly picky about productivity apps, but this one is definitely a winner. The mechanics are simple, yet the design hits all the right dopamine triggers. I’ve genuinely been getting more done, but without the guilt or pressure other tools tend to create. It’s cute, calming, and actually fun to use. I really love deep work mode + the 2-hour time limit to prevent over-committing. If you have ADHD (or just struggle to start tasks because you can’t get off your phone), Focus Friend might be the gentle push you didn’t know you needed.