Best 1Focus alternative for Mac

Where 1Focus wins

1Focus is a small, Mac-native blocker written in Swift. It lives in the menu bar, comes from the Mac App Store, and does one job well: pick a blocklist of sites and apps, pick a duration or a preset, and the block runs. It also has the scheduling Focuh does not. Recurring daily and weekly blocks, different lists for different hours, and category blocking so all social media or all news goes quiet at once, with nothing to start by hand. If you want a lightweight Mac focus session that you launch from the menu bar and forget, or set-and-forget schedules that block from nine to five without you in the loop, 1Focus is the right tool and Focuh is not built for that shape of day.

Where Focuh wins

Focuh is an ADHD todo list for Mac and web. Today sits next to Google Calendar. Week is the week. Loops are standing to-dos with no date: you pull a copy onto today and the loop stays. Goals are the one win for the horizon. 1Focus has no list, no calendar and no task timer, so it can keep Twitter shut for two hours but it cannot tell you what those two hours were for. The Focuh focus timer starts from a task, so the session already knows what it is about, and the blocklist is part of that session rather than a standalone rule. On Mac the block is enforced at the system level through Accessibility, so it covers Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Arc at once, and apps too: Slack, Discord and Messages stay closed for the length of the session. Focuh also syncs the same list between the Mac app and the web app, so the plan is there on any machine even where the Mac blocker is not.

Price: 1Focus is a subscription on the Mac App Store, with app blocking and advanced scheduling on the higher tiers. Focuh is free. Early beta. No subscription. If the cost is what sent you looking, that is the whole difference; if it is the missing planner, read on.

Who should pick which

Pick 1Focus if you want a clean Mac-native blocker and nothing else: session presets from the menu bar, recurring schedules that run without you, category lists, and an App Store subscription you already have a timer and task manager to sit beside. Pick Focuh if you are on Mac and the leak is the day itself: you need Today next to GCal, a week view, loops that wait until you pull them, and a blocker that holds across every browser and app on the machine while the timer runs, with the same list waiting in the web app. Neither one is an unbreakable vault. Both can be switched off by a determined user, so choose on what the block is attached to, a schedule or a task.

Want the full side-by-side, with the feature table and FAQ? Read Focuh vs 1Focus.