Best Forest alternative for Mac

Where Forest wins

Forest is a focus timer that makes staying put feel like a game. You set a length, plant a tree, and the tree grows while you leave the phone alone. Quit early and it dies. Sessions earn coins, coins unlock new species, and months of focus turn into a forest you can scroll through, which is a real reward loop if streaks and loss aversion work on your brain. Forest is also social in a way Focuh is not: you can plant with friends in a shared room where one person leaving kills everyone's tree, compare leaderboards, and spend coins through its partner program to plant real trees. It runs on iOS and Android with a Chrome extension on the side, so it lives where the phone distraction lives. If the job is a playful nudge to put the phone down, or a team forest that keeps a study group honest, Forest is the sharper tool, and Focuh does not attempt any of that.

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. The focus timer starts from a task, so the session already knows what it is for, and the blocklist is part of that session rather than a separate app. On Mac the blocklist is enforced at the system level, so it covers Safari, Firefox, Arc and Chrome at once, and it covers apps as well, so Slack, Discord and Messages go quiet too. Forest does not block anything: the tree is a deterrent, and you can still open any site or app and simply lose it. Forest also has no todo list and no calendar view, so deciding what the session is for happens somewhere else. Focuh 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: Forest is a one-time purchase on iOS, free with ads on Android with a paid unlock, and free as a Chrome extension. Focuh is free. Early beta. No subscription.

Who should pick which

Pick Forest if the phone is the distraction, gamification keeps you going, you want to plant with friends or a study group, and the real-tree program matters to you. Pick Focuh if you are on Mac and the leak is the day itself: you need Today next to GCal, loops that wait until you pull them, and a blocker that holds across every browser and app on the machine while the timer runs. Some people run both. Forest on the phone to grow the streak, Focuh on the Mac for the everyday session where knowing what to work on matters as much as the block.

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