The 7 Best Apps To Help You Focus

We can all probably agree that we spent a bit too much time on our phones last year. Between lockdowns and quarantines, the amount of time we spend staring at screens has shot up – and it was high to begin with. And a lot of that time is on less-than-productive platforms, according to a 2020 Smart Wallet survey. Wouldn’t it be nice to cut back on all the background noise? These apps are here to help you end the doomscrolling, control your headspace, and focus.

1. Forest

A screenshot from the Forest app, a productivity app that helps people work from home — Forest App to stay focused

Everyone knows that it can be tough to put down the smartphone. There are a million things to do on an iPhone or Android at any time, and it gets distracting. Forest will distract you from those distractions and keep you focused.

With more than 30 million downloads worldwide, Forest is one of the most popular productivity apps available. The app helps increase focus by engaging you with a game: plant a tree and watch it grow, but if you leave the app it dies. Forest forces you to stay inside its interface, keeping you from any distractions. The more you focus and the less time you spend on your phone, the more trees grow! Over time you’ll have a full forest on your screen with each tree representing one instance of hard work.

Forest costs $1.99 in the App Store, but you can try Flora, a similar free app, as well!

2. Freedom

Depending on how good your self-control is, you might need a bit of help staying off Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube when working from home. If that’s the case, Freedom is perfect for you. The platform lets you set limits on how much time you can spend on any website before blocking you. That way, you can still take breaks on social media but won’t get dragged into a time-wasting wormhole.

Freedom also offers a locked mode to help even the hardest procrastinators fight back. Since typically you can edit your blocklist whenever you like, technically Freedom just pushes sites like Twitter and ESPN a few clicks further away but doesn’t make them inaccessible. When Freedom is locked, you can’t change any of your blocked sites for a set period of time, so you can really crack down and work.

According to the website, Freedom users save more than two hours per day on average by cutting down their time on unproductive sites.

3. Bakery

Like Forest, Bakery is designed to get your eyes off your phone and your mind on work. Select a pastry to bake and set a timer within the app, and let the Bakery work its magic. You can set the timer as short as five minutes or as long as two hours, so Bakery is a good fit if you work in short spurts or long stretches. You can turn your screen off while baking, but your pastry will burn if you’re out of the app for more than 10 seconds.

Bakery is constantly expanding its in-game dessert offerings to offer a fun experience while boosting your productivity.

4. Focus Keeper

You might not be familiar with this app, but you’ve probably heard of the technique it utilizes: Pomodoro. The Pomodoro Technique is a simple time management strategy that entails spending 25 minutes actively working on a project, followed by five minutes off. Focus Keeper encourages you to complete four Pomodoros or focus sessions and then taking an extended break.

With the timed aspect of Forest and Bakery combined with repetition, Focus Keeper can help keep you productive throughout the day with almost no effort required. The app shows you your progress over the last 30 days too, so you can see how much time you spend focusing.

5. Serene (only on macOS for now)

Like Freedom, Serene is designed to boost your productivity and allows you to block certain sites and apps. In addition, Serene also forces you to set daily goals and plan your schedule to help you stick to a plan and stay productive. There are also built-in breaks, as well as music and timers to help you focus.

Serene is free to use for your first “10 deep work hours.” After that, the platform costs $4 per month. They are developing a Windows version to come soon.

6. SelfControl (only on macOS)

SelfControl is like using Freedom or Serene on hardcore mode. Like the others, SelfControl allows you to build a website blocklist and block those pages for a certain length of time. When you start the timer on SelfControl, however, there is no way to stop it. Restart your computer, delete SelfControl – it doesn’t matter. If you blocked YouTube for five hours, the only way to get YouTube back is to do something else for that time. If you’re someone who needs a lot of rigidity and structure to buckle down, SelfControl could be the perfect app for you.

For Windows users, the SelfControl team recommends SelfRestraint. It’s essentially the same thing and based on SelfControl, but another developer made the Windows version.

7. Mindful Browsing

A Chrome extension, Mindful Browsing is a flexible focus platform geared toward eliminating your time-wasting habits. Mindful Browsing doesn’t restrict you from any sites or force you to stay on a certain screen but instead offers gentle nudges toward things other than social and streaming sites. You can set which sites you want to spend less time on, and set reminders of what you’d rather try to do instead. For instance, if you’ve listed Facebook and open the site, Mindful Browsing may ask if you’d rather spend 10 minutes taking a quick walk or practicing deep breathing.

Mindful Browsing isn’t necessarily made for increasing productivity, but it’s a great way to keep your mind focused and your goals clear.

Which app will you be trying?