Focus Firewall
Block distracting websites while you work
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Focus Firewall - Block distracting websites while you work

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Focus Firewall blocks distracting websites and apps on your Mac while you work. Set your hours once and it runs by itself, in every major browser, with no extensions. New: the Browsing Report shows where your day went, hour by hour, with a focus score that leaves room for planned breaks. Also new: require Touch ID or password to stop blocking. No account, and nothing leaves your Mac. Free for 7 days.

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Maker
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Hey everyone, Andre here. I make Focus Firewall. We launched here a little over two years ago and have shipped 25 updates since. We care a lot about quality, so most of those were bug fixes, support for new macOS releases, polish to keep the app fresh, and performance work to keep it as fast as possible with the tiniest footprint (full native, 80MB in RAM, near zero CPU usage). The idea is the same as on day one, which is to block the distracting stuff on your Mac during work hours and stay out of the way the rest of the time. What I've been most careful about is bloat. It's easy for an app like this to pile on features until it becomes one more thing to manage, so we add slowly. This year that meant the Browsing Report, which shows where your day went, and Touch ID confirmation when you want to unblock. We also added a lifetime purchase option for those who prefer it.

the Touch ID requirement to stop blocking is a bit of a double edged feature - it's exactly what someone with real self-control problems needs, but it's also just as easy to disable Focus Firewall entirely from the menu bar if you're determined enough, right? curious if there's actually a meaningful barrier there or if it mostly works because most people don't bother fighting their own tools

Maker

It is quite easy to unblock from the menu bar, and Touch ID isn't really required, it's optional and you can turn it off. But our method isn't really about making it more difficult to unblock, for some people that doesn't really work and they just end up uninstalling it because it's unrealistic. We consume social media daily, our friends and colleagues send us stuff all day, and it's not a big deal to spend a few mins a day. I do take issue with doomscrolling for hours, wasting hours away on YouTube, etc, and spiralling sucks, which is what we focus on.

Our method: you open your Mac in the morning and start working. When you feel the impulse to check social media, it won't work. Sure you can disable it, but just going to the menu bar it is enough friction to remind you that you installed this for a reason, or gives you a moment to think "Do I really want this?". In the menu bar we also have your score which gives you feedback. I also like that it's fully automated (schedule) and I don't have to think about it.

What ends up happening, as I'm told by my users, is that they either give up or they use our Pause feature (in case it's a juicy link a friend sent you and you're very curious). Using pause is much better than turning it off, since it brings blocking back on and cuts off your doomscrolling session. And users naturally tend to use pause more often than turning it off completely.

Folks from one-sec (one of our competitors) have some really cool research on how friction (the method we use) alone helps reduce and prevent overuse:

All that said, I do not think the app is a silver bullet. To quote one of our user reviews "Focus Firewall respects my autonomy and treats me like an adult, giving me the tools to manage my time effectively."