What Focus is genuinely good at
Silencing everything except what matters, on a schedule, without you having to think about it. For interruption driven use it is excellent and underrated.
It also hides apps from the Home Screen and can swap which pages you see, which lowers the number of unthinking opens.
What Focus does not do
It does not stop you opening an app. Everything is still installed, still searchable, and Focus itself is one swipe from off in Control Centre.
So it is close to perfect against notifications and close to useless against a deliberate reach at eleven at night, which for most people is the half that actually matters.
- Focus
- stops the phone interrupting you
- A blocker
- stops you opening the app
- Both
- the only combination that covers a whole day
Set Focus up first
It is free, it is already there, and for a meaningful number of people the notifications were most of the problem. Doing this first also tells you what is left.
If a week of aggressive Focus settings fixes it, you have saved yourself a subscription and you should stop reading.
Add blocking for the part Focus cannot reach
Self-generated opens. Nothing prompted you, you were bored, and no notification setting has any purchase on that.
This is the half where whose finger is on the off switch starts to matter, because a block you can lift is exactly as strong as a Focus you can swipe away.
A setup that covers both halves
A work Focus and a sleep Focus, allowing only real people through. Then a blocked window over the hours that are actually the problem, held by somebody who is not you.
Between them that is the arriving half and the reaching half, which is the whole thing.
Common questions
Can Focus block apps completely?
No. It can hide them and silence them, which is not the same thing and stops working the moment you go looking.
Do they conflict?
No, they operate on different mechanisms and stack cleanly.