Free core · macOS 14+ · No tracking
A website blocker for the gap between deciding and doing.
Ten lock types, from a gentle countdown to a block that cannot be turned off at all. Enforced by a background daemon that outlives quitting, force-quitting and uninstalling. Core blocker free forever.
Free forever core · Pro is $4.99 once, not a subscription · v1.22.4 · Universal binary · Apple-notarised
Most focus apps are built on the assumption that the hard part is deciding. Choose your priorities, set your intention, and the rest follows. If you have ADHD, deciding is rarely the problem. You already know what matters, you already know the site isn't it, and you can explain in detail why you shouldn't open it — right up until the moment you have already opened it.
FocusDragon is an ADHD website blocker for Mac in one specific sense: it is built for the gap between the decision and the doing, rather than for the decision. It does not treat, manage or improve anything about your attention, and it makes no medical claims. It is a tool that adds external friction — friction that exists outside your head, so it doesn't have to be generated by you at the exact moment you have the least of it available.
The whole core is free forever: unlimited blocks, all ten lock types, every browser extension, system-level enforcement. If you want the general version of this rather than the ADHD-specific one, the website blocker for Mac page covers the same engine without the framing.
Almost every blocker on the Mac can be switched off in about two clicks. That design assumes the person reaching for the off switch is the same person who set the block — calm, rested, thinking about next week. Usually they aren't.
The moment a blocker actually has to survive is the moment executive function is least available. Which means a blocker whose only defence is a decision you make in that moment is asking the exact faculty that is failing to save you. That's not a willpower problem to be lectured about. It's a design problem, and the fix is to make the off switch cost something.
Twenty minutes and two hours feel roughly identical from the inside. A blocker that relies on you noticing how long you've been somewhere has already lost. A blocker that owns the clock hasn't.
The browser is never more attractive than in the ninety seconds before starting something hard. If the block only exists once you've started working, it isn't there for the part that needs it.
By the third tab it isn't a series of choices any more. Interrupting a reflex takes something physical — a countdown you have to sit through, a string you have to retype — not a dialog box asking whether you're sure.
Ten lock types exist because different failures need different friction. Over-locking everything is the fastest route to deleting the app; under-locking is the fastest route to it doing nothing.
“Five minutes” was ninety.
A Schedule block puts the wall up at the same hours every day, so the boundary doesn't depend on you noticing that time has passed. Timer gives a session a hard edge you didn't have to watch a clock to enforce.
The tab you open on the way to starting.
The hardest minute is the first one, and it's the minute a browser is most inviting. Sessions keeps the block on until you've completed a set number of focus sessions, so the exit is tied to work done rather than time survived.
Not a decision — a reflex.
Reflexes need an interruption, not a warning. Delay drops a full-screen countdown in front of the unblock. Random Text makes you retype a long generated string exactly before anything happens. Either one costs enough attention to break the loop.
The version of you that undoes it.
This is the failure a two-click blocker can't survive. Restart requires full reboots. Password holds if you generated a long one and didn't memorise it. Frozen cannot be turned off before its date by any means — not force-quitting, not reinstalling.
You will sometimes actually need the site.
Breakable gives you a fixed number of breaks — say three — and locks hard once they're spent. It's an allowance rather than a moral test, which is usually the difference between a blocker you keep and one you delete.
Until the exam. Until the deadline.
Pick the calendar day the block ends and stop renegotiating daily. There's no countdown to argue with, only a date you already chose while thinking clearly.
A lock is only worth as much as the thing enforcing it. FocusDragon's enforcement doesn't live in the app you can see — it lives in a root-owned background daemon that keeps running whatever the visible app is doing. Four consequences follow, and they're the reason the locks above mean anything:
Blocking is enforced at the system level as well as inside the browser, so switching from Safari to Chrome to Firefox doesn't change the rules. Extensions ship for Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Firefox, and all of them are part of the free version.
The best configuration is the one you never have to think about again, because remembering to turn on the blocker is the same class of task as remembering to start the work. Three steps, once:
If the sites on your short list are gambling sites specifically, the gambling blocker page covers a stricter configuration and lists support resources alongside it.
FocusDragon is software that blocks websites and apps. It is not a treatment, a therapy, a medical device or a substitute for any of them, and it will not make ADHD easier to live with by itself. Nothing on this page is medical advice, and we don't cite research we can't stand behind.
What it does is narrow: it removes easy access to specific things at specific times, and it keeps removing them when you would rather it didn't. That's a genuinely useful thing for a tool to do. It is also the entire claim.
Every lock type described on this page is in the free version. Pro is a one-time payment, not a subscription.
More on the full FAQ page.
It isn't an ADHD product and it makes no medical claims. It's a website and app blocker for macOS that adds real, unskippable friction between you and the sites you've decided not to open. People with ADHD tend to want stronger friction than a one-click off switch provides, which is why this page exists — but the app treats nothing and diagnoses nothing.
Schedule, for most people. It turns the block on during the hours you already know you need it, so you never have to remember to start it — which removes the step most likely to be forgotten. Once that's habitual, add Delay or Random Text on top so that turning it off mid-session costs more than a click.
That depends entirely on the lock you chose, and choosing is the point. Timer waits out a duration. Delay makes you sit through a countdown. Random Text makes you retype a long generated string exactly. Restart requires a set number of full Mac reboots. Password holds unless you know the password — which works well if you generate a long one and deliberately don't memorise it. Frozen cannot be turned off at all before its date.
Yes. Any Mac app — Slack, Discord, Steam, a game, a messaging client — can go into a block, and FocusDragon force-quits it while the block is active. App blocking uses the same 10 lock types as website blocking, so the friction you picked applies to both.
Yes. Enforcement runs in a root-owned background daemon, not inside the visible app. Quitting FocusDragon doesn't lift a block. Force-quitting the daemon doesn't either. Dragging the app to the Trash during an active block triggers a restore from a hidden backup within seconds. Changing your system clock doesn't help — timers measure elapsed time against a clock the date setting cannot move.
Plan for it rather than fight it. Block specific domains rather than whole categories, use Breakable when you know you'll legitimately need a small number of exceptions, and keep the heavy locks — Restart, Frozen — for the handful of sites that never have a good reason. A blocker you have to fight ten times a day gets uninstalled by the weekend.
The core blocker is free forever: unlimited blocks, all 10 lock types, Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Firefox extensions, and system-level enforcement. Pro is a one-time $4.99 — locked mode, Bulletproof Strictness and full statistics. It's not a subscription and nothing renews. There's a 7-day trial; a card is required up front and a single $4.99 charge lands on day 7 unless you cancel before then. Refunds within 14 days.
macOS 14 Sonoma and later, on Apple Silicon and Intel. It's a universal binary, signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple before every release.
Set one Schedule block for your working hours and pick a lock you can't talk your way past. It takes about a minute, and it's the last time you have to decide.
Free forever core · Pro $4.99 once · v1.22.4 · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel