Which focus app should you actually use?
Six questions and you get a straight answer across ten real tools. If you would rather read than click, everything the questions are based on is written out below them.
Start here
Ten real tools, including every one we compete with. You get a pick, a runner-up, and one to avoid for your situation, each with the reason attached.
No affiliate links. No email. Hugo is the answer for a minority of the possible results.
Or skip the questions
Most people fit one of these five, and four of them are not our product. If one describes you, take it and close the tab.
Four of those five are not our product. If one of them fits, take it and skip the rest of this page.
There are only four kinds of tool
Every app on this page is one of four things. Most people buy the wrong category rather than the wrong brand, which is an expensive mistake because the categories fail in completely different ways.
Hard blockers
Cold Turkey, SelfControl, Focus
You name the sites, they make them unreachable for a set period. The strict ones cannot be stopped once started, even by uninstalling.
Fails when you need a blocked site for legitimate work at 3pm, or your real distraction was never on the list.
Friction tools
One Sec, Forest
They put something between you and the app: a breathing pause, a growing tree, a moment of deliberate delay. You can always proceed.
Fails when you are determined. Friction interrupts a reflex, and it will not stop a decision.
Trackers
RescueTime, Apple Screen Time
They record where your time actually goes and report back. Intervention is secondary and usually light.
Fails when you already know the answer. Measurement changes behaviour for a week or two, then becomes wallpaper.
Contextual tools
Hugo
No fixed list. You state what you are working on and each site is judged against that, so the same page can be allowed at 2pm and held at 2:15.
Fails when your distractions are unambiguous and always off-limits. A hard blocker is simpler, cheaper and just as effective.
Where it gets harder
The short answer breaks down when your distractions are not obviously distractions. If the thing pulling you away is a different document, a Slack thread about real work, or a genuinely useful tangent, then no list of banned sites can help, because everything on your screen would have to be on the list.
This is the failure people describe as "I tried a blocker and it did not work for me." Usually the blocker worked exactly as designed. It was asked to solve a problem it cannot see, because the tabs taking your afternoon were Notion, Gmail, a shared doc and a Figma file, and no honest blocklist has those on it.
The questions below separate that case from the others. If it turns out to be yours, the answer is a different category of tool rather than a stricter version of the one that already failed.
Two things worth deciding first
How hard do you want to be stopped. Strictness is not a virtue. A tool you cannot escape works brilliantly for some people and gets uninstalled in week two by others, usually the ones who hit a genuine need for a blocked site during a locked session and had no way out. If that would enrage you, buy friction rather than a wall.
Whether you will maintain a list. Most of these tools ask you to name the bad sites in advance and keep that list current as your work changes. Some people enjoy that. If you know you will not, rule out everything that depends on it now rather than discovering it in a month.
How we decide
Six questions narrow to a single rule in an ordered decision tree. The specific cases sit above the general ones, so a phone-first problem never reaches the Mac rules and someone who only wants tracking never gets sold a blocker. There are no weighted scores, which means every recommendation can show the reason it was chosen and you can see which of your answers produced it.
Why we recommend competitors
Hugo is built for one situation: when the things pulling you away are legitimate work. If your problem is your phone, or a fixed list of sites you want walled off forever, other tools do that job better and we say so. Across every possible path through these six questions, Hugo is the recommendation for fewer than half. A matcher that always picked its own maker's product would be an advert with extra steps, and nobody would have reason to trust the answer.
Every tool we consider
All pricing and platform data verified as of 2026-08-28. Reviewed quarterly. No affiliate links.
Common questions
Which focus app should I use on a Mac?
It depends on what pulls you away. If your distractions are entertainment sites and you want an unbreakable wall, Cold Turkey Blocker at $45 once is the strictest option, and SelfControl does a narrower version free. If your distractions are other work, no blocklist can help, because every destination is legitimate, and you need a tool that judges each tab against the task you are on. If you mainly want to know where the time goes, RescueTime tracks it. This matcher asks six questions and names one.
How do you decide what to recommend?
A decision tree, not a score. Six questions narrow to one rule, and every result shows the reason it was chosen along with a runner-up and one tool to avoid for your case. There are no scores to hide behind, so if a recommendation looks wrong you can see exactly which answer drove it.
Why does this recommend competitors when Hugo makes it?
Because Hugo is wrong for most of the situations people arrive with. If your problem is your phone, buy Opal or One Sec. If you want a wall around a fixed list of sites, buy Cold Turkey. Hugo is built for one case, where your distractions are legitimate work that no blocklist can catch, and recommending it outside that case would make the whole tool worthless. Across every possible path through these questions, Hugo is the answer for fewer than half.
Are these prices current?
Every price and platform claim here was checked against the vendor's own site on 28 August 2026 and is reviewed quarterly. Notable at the last check: Cold Turkey Pro is $45, not the $39 many review sites still quote; Opal moved to opalapp.com; Forest replaced its one-time purchase with a subscription; and Serene has been discontinued, so it is not listed.
Do you earn commission on these recommendations?
No. There are no affiliate links anywhere on this page. Every outbound link goes straight to the vendor. The neutrality is the only thing that makes the recommendation worth reading.
AI-Powered Focus
The focus app that thinks for you.
Hugo sits between you and distraction. It hides your apps, locks down your browser, and uses AI to silently decide if what you're opening is actually work - so you never have to burn willpower again.