Focus Timer · Mono Focus

Mono Focus is a focus timer with a hard rule: leave the app while the timer runs and you lose minutes off the clock. Switch to Instagram for a peek and the penalty stacks. There is no soft warning and no "are you sure" — the timer just bleeds.

Most focus apps trust you to stay. This one assumes you won't. That assumption is the whole point. The escape mechanic separates accidental phone calls (logged in their own counter) from deliberate exits, so you can see how much of your distraction is actually unavoidable versus how much is just you reaching for the phone.

Pick a label like algorithm study or journal, set a goal in minutes, and hit start. If you stay, the streak grows. If you leave, you pay in time. Hard lock pins the app on Android so even the home button does nothing during a session. Soft lock uses an accessibility-based auto-return when you wander off — open another app and it bounces you back to Mono Focus.

The streak fire is the carrot. Finish every todo for the day and the flame grows from a small spark to a thirty-day inferno. Miss a day, it dies, you start over. The streak is the cleanest motivator you can wire into a focus timer because the cost of breaking it is visible in a single glance.

The history grid shows where the hours went. 52 weeks, GitHub-style heatmap, color-graded by minutes focused. By-label charts show which categories you actually put time into versus the ones you keep abandoning. "I'm focusing more this month" stops being a vibe and becomes a number.

Pomodoro is optional. Set focus and rest cycles, the timer auto-rotates with distinct alert sounds for each transition. Or run pure deep-work mode with no breaks at all. Schedule auto-lock blocks in advance, like 9 AM Monday for 60 minutes of study, and the phone locks itself whether you remember to start or not.

Everything stays on your device. No accounts, no sync, no servers. The app reads only what it needs.

Mono Focus is the focus timer for people who already know what they should be doing and want a structure that does not let them off the hook. Build the streak.