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Features

How AI Focus works

Last verified: September 2026

In short

You start a block by typing what you're working on. While the block runs, AI Focus looks at your screen every 10 to 20 seconds (less often once your plan's monthly allowance is used up) and asks one question: are you distracted from your goal? If the answer is yes on two checks in a row, it closes the browser or app in front and keeps it closed for a short cooldown.

Your goal

Your goal is the words you type on the start screen, like “algebra homework” or “history essay on the Cold War”. Every check is judged against those words, so the more specific they are, the better the dragon can tell work from distraction. The goal is locked once the block starts and stays the same until it ends.

Before a block can start, FocusDragon checks four things: Screen Recording is allowed, FocusDragon's server can be reached, the FocusDragon extension is ready in every supported browser you have installed, and your plan includes AI Focus. Anything missing is listed with one button to fix it.

How often it checks

  • A check runs at a random moment every 10 to 20 seconds, so there's no rhythm to time a quick switch around.
  • Each check is a screenshot of your whole screen, every display if you have more than one, shrunk down before it's sent. It goes with your goal and, as context, the name of the app in front, its window title and, in a browser, the web address. The screenshot is what decides.
  • Once your plan's monthly allowance of checks is used up, checks slow to about every 30 seconds, then about once a minute. They never stop, and the block screen shows which pace you're on.
  • Checks pause while your Mac is asleep or locked, and when there's been no input for 30 seconds and nothing is keeping the display awake. A playing video keeps it awake, and a game controller counts as input. Checking picks up again as soon as you're back.

Two checks before anything is closed

One “distracted” answer is never enough. It sets off a second look 3 to 8 seconds later, and the block screen says it's taking a second look. AI Focus acts only if the second check also comes back distracted, with the same browser or app still in front. If you've moved on by then, nothing happens and checking carries on as normal.

There are no scores and no lists of always-allowed sites. Every answer is a plain yes or no against your goal.

What happens when it acts

  • In a browser, the FocusDragon extension saves your open tabs and closes the distracting one, then FocusDragon quits that browser. Your other browsers are left alone.
  • Any other app is quit.
  • An app gets 3 seconds to quit by itself before it's force-quit, so a save dialog can't hold it open. Anything unsaved in it may be lost.
  • FocusDragon never quits Finder, the Dock, System Settings, itself or anything macOS needs to keep running.
  • A card tells you what was closed and why. What the card and the AI Focus log show: focusdragon.app/docs/why-was-my-app-closed

The cooldown ladder

Whatever was closed stays closed for a cooldown. If you open it again, it's closed straight away. A cooldown's end is fixed when it starts, so reopening doesn't make it any longer.

  • First strike: 2 minutes.
  • Second strike: 2 minutes.
  • Third strike: 5 minutes.
  • Fourth strike and every one after: 10 minutes. A cooldown is never longer than that.

There's one strike count for the whole block, shared by every browser and app. The menu bar counts down the time left. When a browser's cooldown ends, FocusDragon offers to restore your tabs, without the one that was closed.

Nothing outlasts the block: when it ends, every cooldown ends with it.

Strikes carry over for 2 hours

If you start another AI Focus block within 2 hours of the last one ending, your strikes come with you, whether that block finished or you stopped it early. The block screen reminds you that each strike lengthens the next cooldown. Start more than 2 hours later and you begin again at the first strike.

The glow

While the dragon is watching, a soft teal glow lights the edges and corners of every display, so you always know checking is on. It's on by default. To turn it off, open the block length and options menu on the start screen and switch off “Light up the screen edges while watching”.

The glow never appears in the screenshots: FocusDragon leaves its own windows out of every capture. It also goes off when AI blocking is paused or a trial's taster is used up.

More about AI Focus

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