Questions and answers

It runs work sessions on a timer and logs them. You set how long a work block and a break last, each session is attributed to a task, and the statistics screen shows how a date range split across your tasks. A work session can also mute the phone, drop the Wi‑Fi connection and block applications you have named.

Change them. 25 minutes of work with a 5-minute break is the classic Pomodoro figure and 52/17 is another well-known split, but work duration, break duration, long break duration and the number of sessions before a long break are all yours to set. Tasks can also carry their own settings.

By itself, no, and nobody should claim otherwise. What it does is impose a structure on the time and keep an honest record of what was worked on. Whether that helps depends entirely on you actually starting the sessions. No percentage improvement is promised anywhere on this site, because no honest one exists.

Neither. Tasks exist so that time has somewhere to be recorded, not as a list of things to tick off. There are no streaks, no reminders to build a habit and no project management. It is a timer with a memory.

Not frequently. The Google Play listing shows the last update in June 2020. It is still published and installable from the listing, and the timer, tasks and statistics work as described here.

Treat it as a stable, finished tool rather than one in active development. Two practical consequences: no new features are arriving, and the parts that depend on what Android permits an app to do — changing the sound profile, switching Wi‑Fi off — may behave differently on a recent phone than they did when the app was written. Check on the Play listing that it is compatible with your device before building a routine around it.

Android 9.0 and later, according to the Play listing. Google Play checks your specific device and will tell you whether it is compatible before you install.

No. Brain Focus is an Android application only. If you find an app under this name on another platform, it did not come from this publisher.

It is free to install and free to use, and the free version is funded by advertising — the Play listing carries a Contains ads badge. The listing also carries an In-app purchases badge for the optional Pro version. There is no subscription and no account.

The developer lists: removing ads, home-screen widgets, more than three categories, CSV export and backup. Google Play prices in-app items in this app at $0.99–$10.00 each. The timer, tasks, statistics, app blocking and quiet-mode settings all work without paying.

Purchases, refunds and purchase history are handled by Google Play. This website never takes a payment.

It stops the reflex, not a determined person. While a work session runs, the applications you named are unavailable; you can always end the session and open them. That gap between impulse and action is the whole mechanism, and for most people it is enough precisely because it is not a fight.

No to both. It is a tool for the person holding the phone, not for supervising someone else’s. Nothing it does persists once the app is removed, and it is not designed or suitable for monitoring another person’s device — using it that way is also against the acceptable use policy.

Later Android versions restricted what an application may change about the sound profile and the Wi‑Fi radio, more tightly than when this app was last updated. On some devices these options will not take effect at all. Use app blocking together with Android’s own Do Not Disturb instead — the practical result is much the same.

Not for timing. The Play data safety declaration lists approximate location as data the app may collect, used for analytics and personalisation, which in practice means the advertising and analytics components of the free app rather than the timer itself.

In its Google Play data safety declaration the developer states that the app shares no data with third parties, and that it may collect approximate location for analytics and personalisation. The declaration also states that data is encrypted in transit and that data cannot be deleted on request.

The app has its own privacy policy, separate from this website’s, and the current version of the declaration is always the one on the Play listing.

On the device. There is no cloud account behind the app, so uninstalling removes the local history. Moving it to a new phone is what the Pro backup feature is for, and CSV export gets the numbers out into a spreadsheet.

Battery optimisation stopping background apps, which several manufacturers do aggressively. Allow Brain Focus to run in the background and exclude it from power-saving modes in Android’s own settings. No app can grant itself that permission.

No. The statistics are a record of timed sessions, not of your day. Anything done without starting a session is invisible to the app, which is worth remembering before reading too much into a quiet week.

Bug reports go to the developer contact address published on the Google Play listing; include the phone model and the Android version.

The website is run by Brain Focus, the publisher of the app, and exists to document it in more depth than a store listing allows. It sells nothing, hosts nothing and takes no payment. More on the About page.