For a while my setup was Taskaro on one screen and Forest on the other. Pick a task in Taskaro, then switch over and type roughly the same words into Forest's label field before starting a session. It worked. It also meant I was maintaining two lists that both claimed to know what I was doing that hour, and they drifted constantly.
This is the story of why Focus Mode shipped, and the decisions that shaped what it actually became.
The Annoyance That Started It
I noticed it most on days with a lot of small tasks. Reply to an email, review a PR, write a section of a blog post. Every switch meant re-typing the task into the timer app, and half the time I'd skip the Pomodoro app entirely because the friction of opening a second app for a five-minute task wasn't worth it. The timer app was supposed to help me focus, and instead it was one more decision before I could start.
The fix seemed obvious once I framed it that way: the timer doesn't need to be a separate product. It needs to know what's already in my task list, because that list already exists.
What I Deliberately Left Out
The easy version of this feature is a tree that grows, a mascot, some kind of streak animation layered on top of the countdown. I left all of it out. Taskaro already has a habit of cutting features that add decoration instead of solving the actual problem, and a growing tree doesn't help you finish the task any faster than a plain progress ring does.
I also left out app and website blocking, which apps like Session use to physically stop you from opening Twitter mid-session. It's a genuinely useful feature elsewhere. I didn't want to ask for the device permissions it requires, and I didn't want Taskaro's pitch to become "we lock your phone." The pitch stays simple: pick a task, start a timer, that's the whole tool.
The Free Limit Was the Hard Decision
Taskaro's free tier already draws a line at 3 tasks a day and 3 notes. Focus Mode needed its own line, and I went back and forth on it more than I expected to.
Unlimited free sessions felt generous, but it also meant Focus Mode would never need to justify Pro on its own, it would just ride on the task and note limits. A hard paywall after one session felt stingy, like the feature existed only to be an upsell, not something you were meant to actually use for free.
I landed on 2 sessions a day. Enough to use the feature for real, most days, on the tasks that actually matter. Not enough to run every hour of a full workday on the free tier. Pro removes the cap entirely, same as it does for tasks and notes, for $3.49 a month or $26.99 a year.
The Custom Duration Almost Didn't Make It
The first version only offered fixed 25-minute Pomodoro chips, because that's the default everyone expects. Testing it myself, I kept hitting sessions that needed to be longer: a two-hour writing block, a long debugging session where a 25-minute cutoff would have interrupted actual flow instead of protecting it.
Custom duration up to 8 hours went in a few days before launch. It's a small addition, but it's the difference between a Pomodoro timer and a focus timer, and Taskaro is trying to be the second one.
What I'd Still Change
I don't think Focus Mode is finished. It doesn't yet keep running in the background if you switch apps mid-session, which anyone coming from Forest or Focus To-Do will notice immediately. That's the honest gap right now, and it's next on the list, not a feature I'm pretending doesn't matter.
What shipped is the smallest version that solved my actual problem: stop keeping two lists that both think they know what I'm doing. Everything else gets added when it earns its place, same as it always has.