FocusLens / User guide

User guide

Everything FocusLens does, screen by screen. It is a native Mac app that notices which app is in front of you, sorts your day into productive, distracting and neutral time, and turns it into a focus score you can take apart. It needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

Getting started

FocusLens asks for no Screen Time or Accessibility permission. It listens for the same app-activation notifications macOS sends the Dock, and everything it records stays on your Mac.

Install: Open the disk image and drag FocusLens into Applications. It is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other download; macOS shows its usual “downloaded from the internet” confirmation the first time.
First launch: Three short screens: what FocusLens is, how it tracks, and your first goal — how many hours of deep work you aim for each day. You can change that goal, or add more, any time in Goals.
Window and menu bar: FocusLens runs as a normal window plus a menu bar icon. Closing the window keeps tracking running; the menu bar icon reopens it. Settings is the gear at the foot of the sidebar, or ⌘,.
What a session is: The time between one app coming to the front and the next. Sessions shorter than the minimum in Settings (10 seconds by default) are ignored, FocusLens never records itself, and after 5 minutes without keyboard or mouse input the open session ends at your last input and resumes when you come back.

The focus score

A daily score out of 100, summed from four parts. The Focus Score screen shows the breakdown, and the ⓘ next to it explains each part.

Deep Work — 30 points: Hours of productive app time, with full marks at 6 hours. A productive session of 20 minutes or more is also marked as deep work in your logs and exports.
Context Switching — 25 points: Starts at 25. The first 5 switches into a distracting or entertainment app each day are free; each one after that costs 1.5 points.
Low Distraction — 25 points: The share of your time not spent in distracting or entertainment apps.
Focus Streak — 20 points: Your longest uninterrupted productive session, with full marks at 2 hours.
Labels: Needs Work below 40, Fair 40–54, Good 55–69, Great 70–84 and Excellent 85 and above.

Today, Focus Score and App Switcher

Today: Today's score, deep work, distractions and best streak; your screen time split into productive, distracting and neutral; context switches and the focus time they cost; your top productive apps and top distractions; and coaching insights drawn from your own patterns.
Focus Score: This week's score as a bar chart. Hover a bar for its details and click it to see that day's breakdown, alongside your current and best streaks of days scoring above 70, and your seven-day average.
App Switcher: Today's switches, focus time lost and switches per hour, using the research figure of 23 minutes to fully regain focus, with each disruptive switch costed at 2.3 minutes. Worst Offenders names the apps that break your flow most, and Switch Chains shows the runs of quick switches that broke it.

Analytics, Applications and Timeline

Analytics: A heatmap of the week by hour, a donut of time per category, a chart of productivity by hour that names your peak focus window, and a breakdown table with one row per app that expands into its individual sessions. Every chart shows details on hover.
Applications: Every app you have used, searchable and sortable, with its share of your time. Pick one to see its total, daily average, session count and peak day, a daily usage chart, how long its sessions tend to run, and its most recent sessions.
Timeline: Any single day, stepped with the arrows: an activity log in time order, with quick runs of the same app merged into one entry, beside that day's summary and category split.

Goals

Targets and limits: A goal is a daily amount of one category, from 15 minutes to 12 hours. For productive, communication, utility or neutral apps it is a target to reach; for distracting or entertainment apps it is a limit to stay under.
Progress: Each card shows today's time against the goal and a status: hours to go, Achieved!, minutes remaining, or Limit Reached. With Goal alerts on, you get a notification when a target is met or a limit is hit.
Managing goals: Pause or resume a goal from its card or by right-clicking it; paused goals move to their own list. Delete one with its trash button, or remove them all with Clear All, which asks first.

Reports and exports

Choosing a period: Weekly (the last 7 days), Monthly (the last 30) or Custom, with your own start and end dates. Every card follows the period: a summary with your average score and coaching tips, the score over time, a first-half versus second-half comparison of your apps, and one row for each day with data.
PDF and CSV: Export the whole period as a PDF report or as a CSV with a range summary, a daily breakdown, every app session and per-app totals. Any single day in Daily Reports exports as its own PDF.
Notion: Connect Notion in Settings by pasting an internal integration secret and choosing a database you have shared with it; the database needs Name, Focus Score, Week Start, Deep Work (hrs) and Context Switches columns. Reports → Export → Send to Notion then adds a page for the period. Disconnect stops it.
Email: Export → Email Report… opens a new message in your mail app with the period's summary, ready for you to address and send.

Settings, licence and updates

Tracking and general: Minimum session length (5 to 60 seconds) and how often usage is saved (10 to 120 seconds). Launch at login, and whether the week starts on Monday, which reorders weekly charts.
Notifications: Focus score alerts tell you when today's score drops below 50; goal alerts tell you when a goal is achieved or a limit is reached. macOS asks for permission the first time, and the app works without it.
Resetting: Reset Settings restores the defaults and keeps your data. Clear Data permanently deletes every recorded session, summary and score; both ask first.
Your licence: The full app is free for three days, then a $19.99 one-time licence keeps it. Buy on the FocusLens page, from Settings → License or from the trial-ended screen, paste the key you are emailed and press Activate. Tracking keeps running after the trial ends, so your history is waiting when you activate. A licence is for one Mac: Deactivate frees it to move to another.
Updates: FocusLens checks appverz.com for a new version about once a day, and FocusLens → Check for Updates… checks at once. An update installs only if it carries our signature and Apple's notarization, and the app relaunches into it.
Privacy: No account and no analytics. Your sessions never leave your Mac unless you send a report to Notion or export it yourself. The app goes online only to check its licence key with Dodo Payments and to look for updates. Questions: support@appverz.com.

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