I ran Forest next to Taskaro for about two months before I built a timer into my own app. Task list open on one screen, a tree growing on the other, retyping whatever I was working on into Forest's label field every single time. It worked. It also meant maintaining two places that both claimed to know what I was doing that hour.
Focus Mode shipped in Taskaro because that friction never went away. Here's an honest look at how it stacks up against the dedicated timer apps people actually use, including where they're still the better tool.
What Focus Mode Actually Does
You open Focus Mode, pick a task straight from your due or overdue list (no retyping), and choose a duration: 25 minutes by default, or a custom length up to 8 hours for longer deep-work blocks. A full-screen countdown with a progress ring runs until the session ends, and you can pause and resume if something interrupts you. The free tier gives you 2 focus sessions a day; Pro removes the limit.
That's the entire feature. No streak animations, no forest to grow, no separate app to open before you can start.
Forest: Best at Making You Feel Something
Forest is the app most people mean when they say "focus timer app." Start a session and a tree grows. Leave the app early and it dies. It's a genuinely effective trick, and Forest has built a real habit-forming loop out of a plain countdown.
The catch: Forest doesn't know your task list, because it doesn't have one. You type a label into a text field each time, disconnected from anything you're actually due to do this week. It's a mood-based tool more than a planning one, and it's phone-first, with no meaningful desktop experience for anyone who works at a screen most of the day.
Pick Forest if the gamification is what actually gets you to stay off your phone, and you don't need the timer connected to a real task list.
Focus To-Do: The Closest Competitor
Focus To-Do is the app that comes closest to what Taskaro does, because it already combines a Pomodoro timer with a task list. If you want detailed Pomodoro statistics, custom sound packs, and a mature Android, iOS, and desktop app that's been refined for years, it's a strong pick.
The catch is the one this whole post is about: it's still a second task list. Your real tasks live in Taskaro, or Todoist, or wherever you already plan your day, and now you're keeping a duplicate set inside a timer app just so the timer has something to point at. Two lists drift. Eventually one of them stops being true.
Pick Focus To-Do if you want a dedicated Pomodoro app with deep stats and you're fine running it as your task list too.
Session and Pomofocus: Minimal, and Fine With That
Session (Mac and iOS) and Pomofocus (free, runs in a browser tab) both strip the idea down to a clean timer with almost no setup. Pomofocus in particular is hard to beat if you just want a Pomodoro clock with zero accounts and zero commitment. Session adds real app and website blocking during a session, which neither Taskaro nor Forest do.
Neither connects to a task list at all, which is entirely the point. They're timers, not planners, and they don't pretend otherwise.
Pick one of these if you want the timer and nothing else, and you're fine typing what you're working on from memory each time.
What You Give Up With Focus Mode
I'd rather say this directly than let the comparison feel one-sided. Focus Mode doesn't block distracting apps or websites the way Session does. It doesn't have Forest's years of gamification polish or Focus To-Do's session analytics. The free tier caps you at 2 sessions a day, which is tighter than most dedicated timer apps' free limits. If phone-blocking or deep Pomodoro stats is the actual thing you need, a dedicated app is still the better tool, and I'd say so even though I built Taskaro.
What Focus Mode gives up in depth, it gets back by not existing as a second app.
The Actual Difference
Every dedicated timer app eventually asks the same question: what am I working on right now? Forest asks you to type it. Focus To-Do asks you to add it to its own list first. Taskaro just asks you to tap the task that's already sitting in your kanban board, due today, because you already put it there this morning.
That's not a bigger feature than what the dedicated apps offer. It's one less place for your day to live.