Best StayFocusd alternative for Mac

Where StayFocusd wins

StayFocusd is a free Chrome extension built around a daily time budget, and it has been doing that one job since 2010. You give yourself, say, twenty minutes a day across your distracting sites; once that is spent, they lock until tomorrow. If you want to keep using Reddit a little rather than ban it outright, that rationing model is a genuinely good fit, and Focuh does not replicate it. The Nuclear Option goes the other way: block every site, or everything except an allowlist, for a fixed number of hours with no way to undo it early. StayFocusd also has an in-browser Pomodoro mode, active days and hours, and a challenge you have to type out before you can loosen a setting. It runs entirely inside Chrome with no account and no download. If Chrome is the whole leak and you like the time-budget model, StayFocusd is the sharper tool.

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. Blocking is part of the focus session, not a separate options page: pick the task, start the timer, and the blocklist holds until you stop. On Mac that 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. StayFocusd is a Chrome extension and nothing more: switch browsers or open a native app and its block is gone. StayFocusd also has no todo list and no calendar. 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: StayFocusd is a free Chrome extension with no paid tier. Focuh is free. Early beta. No subscription.

Who should pick which

Pick StayFocusd if the leak is Chrome, you want a daily time budget rather than a wall, you like having the Nuclear Option in reserve, and you already have a list and a calendar you like. 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 during a session. Plenty of people run both. StayFocusd for the always-on Chrome budget, Focuh 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 StayFocusd.