Simply bring your tasks to a focus…
Posted on Monday, June 27th, 2011 by Macoscope
…with our new app – Focusbar! It’s a small but very useful tool for your Mac, which will help you in focusing on one task at a time. All you have to do is press ‘start activity’, type your task and press enter. Focusbar will show up on your screen from time to time, reminding you that it’s time to work on what you’ve planned. It will also show up every time you switch to another window – in case you want to check your Facebook account or spend two hours on Tumblr.
Along with Nozbe Apps, Focusbar will help you to really boost your productivity. We use it all the time and it make wonders!
October 19th, 2011 at 03:53
I love your simple app. Just a small request, could you do a global shortcut to Start Activity?
October 19th, 2011 at 03:55
And another request, reduce the memory usage :)
October 19th, 2011 at 11:29
Hi, I like the idea very much. Instead of restricting access to certain websites and programs, Focusbar simply reminds me to stay on given task.
But without working algorithm or learning mode, I find Focusbar only extremely annoying and DISTRACTING. Problem is, when working on computer, we need to use more apps or processes. Even simple music track change or Alfred App calculation counts as new process and triggers “hey, you’re supposed to be working notification”.
You could simply create basic learning mode, it could log which apps person need for certain task (webdevelopment, webdesign, work on thesis, invoices) and also allow some other apps (like Finder, iTunes) for certain time. I believe RescueTime does that, but it’s overkill. Your app could be more “zen-like” and very simple.
Other suggestions: Growl intergrations, pomodoro technique integration. And for 1.3, please at least disable notification when switching into other apps.
App could be real success, everybody is nowadays crazy about productivity, time tracking, GTD, but apps, even on Mac are in dismal state – most of them they took more time than they potentially save – for example Concentrate or all f.ugly pomodoro timers. Look, simplicity and coherence counts, especially on Mac. :)
Sorry for my grumbling. Have a nice day.
October 19th, 2011 at 11:56
@Khanh, @Bohumil – Thanks a lot for your feedback, we’ll consider all of your suggestions when updating Focusbar.
October 29th, 2011 at 10:01
It would be verry relax when there is an option where i can choose a wich programs are used fore a common task.
i have a lot of tasks hwere is use safari for searching difficulties in LaTeX, Matlab or Comsol and the best case (not) all of them. i like it when i can for a common task add a few programs where he don’t react on
November 2nd, 2011 at 14:24
@Jan-Bert – Thanks. We’re thinking on adding feature of discriminating running apps as well.
December 17th, 2011 at 11:54
Wonderful product!
Could you add some API even very basic as URL handler focusbar://activity=sth ?
December 19th, 2011 at 23:22
Sounds like a good idea. What’s the use case though? Should it start immediately specified activity, or just present Focusbar new activity window with the “sth” already entered, but wait for further input?
(Or maybe distinguish these cases by some flag in the URL itself?)
December 20th, 2011 at 04:21
Thanks for the response, Wojtek.
My use case is to use with some GTD software I’m using, so starting immediately should be simplest to go.