Live App

Focus Time: Hyperfocus Awareness for Deep Work

A macOS menu bar timer that helps people with ADHD maintain awareness during hyperfocus sessions through periodic check-ins, session reviews, and calendar integration.

Why I Built This

As someone with ADHD, I experience hyperfocus—those deep work sessions where hours disappear. While this superpower drives incredible productivity, it comes with a cost: forgotten meetings, skipped meals, and losing track of time entirely.

Existing timers and Pomodoro apps weren't built for this. They assume you want to stop working, but hyperfocus doesn't work that way. What I needed was gentle awareness—periodic check-ins that keep me grounded without breaking flow.

Focus Time sits quietly in your menu bar, asking "What are you working on?" every 15 minutes. It's not about interrupting deep work—it's about creating accountability touchpoints that help you stay intentional about where your hyperfocus energy goes.

Technical Architecture

Built for privacy and performance—all data stays local, no network calls, no tracking.

Tauri 2.x — Rust + JavaScript hybrid framework for native macOS menu bar apps with minimal memory footprint
Rust backend — System tray integration, macOS Calendar API (EventKit) access, and JSONL logging with zero network dependencies
Vanilla JavaScript frontend — Lightweight, framework-free UI with smooth animations and keyboard shortcuts
Local-first storage — All focus session data stored in JSONL format in Tauri's sandboxed app directory
Native macOS APIs — Direct EventKit integration pulls current calendar meeting as suggested focus goal

Key Features

🧠 Periodic Check-Ins

Gentle prompts every 15 minutes asking "What are you doing now?" to maintain awareness without breaking flow.

📊 Session Review

Timeline view shows all check-ins for a session, revealing your focus patterns and task-switching behavior.

📅 Calendar Integration

Automatically suggests your current calendar meeting as a focus goal—no manual goal-setting required.

🔒 Privacy-First

All data stays on your machine. No cloud sync, no analytics, no network calls. Your focus patterns are yours alone.

Technical Challenges Solved

Tauri 2 Window Focus Issues: Navigated the trade-off between skipTaskbar (no Dock icon) and window interactivity. Implemented ActivationPolicy::Regular to ensure buttons and text inputs work reliably.

macOS Calendar API Integration: Bridged Rust with Objective-C EventKit APIs to fetch current calendar events, handling permission prompts and error states gracefully.

JSONL Logging for Session Data: Designed append-only log format for focus check-ins that supports efficient reads, search, and future analytics without a database.