Focus Mode

What it actually does

It fills the screen with nothing. In full screen, your tabs, the address bar, your bookmarks and anything else the browser usually shows are gone, and so is every other window. What remains is a blank field and, if you want it, a quiet count of how long you have been at it.

That is a modest thing, and it works better than it sounds. Most of what pulls your eye away is in the browser chrome and the windows behind it, and removing all of it removes the invitation.

What it cannot do

It cannot silence your notifications. A web page has no power over your operating system: messages, calendar alerts, email badges, calls and the sounds that come with them are delivered by macOS, Windows, Android or iOS, and they will arrive over the top of any full-screen page, including this one.

For those, use the tool your system already has — Do Not Disturb or Focus on a Mac or iPhone, Focus assist or Do not disturb on Windows, Do Not Disturb on Android. Turning one of those on, and then coming back here, is the combination that actually works.

It also cannot close your other tabs, block a website, log your time or report on your habits. It is a blank screen with an optional clock, and it is trying not to be anything else.

The elapsed counter

Off by default, because a number ticking away is itself a distraction for some people. Turned on, it shows how long the current session has run, measured against your computer's clock rather than by counting in the background — so it stays right if you switch away and return.

Nothing is recorded. When you press Stop it tells you how long the session was and then forgets it: no history, no total, no streak, nothing stored between visits. If you want your sessions counted, that is a different kind of tool than this one.

If you want more than blankness

For work and break intervals with a chime, use the Pomodoro Timer. For sound to cover a room, there is White Noise. For a plain black screen — to rest your eyes or save power on an OLED panel — the Black Screen does exactly that and nothing else.