Starting a Focus Mode session right now takes five taps: unlock the phone, open Taskaro, tap Focus Mode, pick a task, pick a duration, hit start. None of those taps is unreasonable on its own. Added together, they're more friction than opening a plain stopwatch app already sitting on the home screen, which is exactly backwards for a feature that's supposed to lower the barrier to starting work.
A widget is the obvious fix, and it's next on my list. Here's the actual reasoning, not just "widgets are good."
The Real Problem Isn't the App, It's the Path to the App
I built Focus Mode specifically to remove the friction of retyping a task into a separate timer app. A widget is the same argument applied one layer earlier: even opening my own app is friction compared to tapping something already visible on the home screen. If the whole point of Focus Mode is starting a session with the least resistance possible, making someone unlock and navigate first works against the entire feature.
What Existing Widgets Get Right
I spent a week with TickTick's and Forest's widgets on my home screen specifically to figure this out, and wrote up the full comparison separately. The short version: Forest's one-tap start is the fastest thing I tested, and TickTick's task visibility is the most useful thing I tested. Neither one does both.
What I Actually Want It to Do
Three things, in order of how non-negotiable they are:
- Show the next due or overdue task by name. Not a generic "start focusing" button. The whole value of Focus Mode is that it already knows what you're supposed to be doing.
- Start a session in one tap, using whatever duration you used last, so the common case needs zero decisions.
- Show a live countdown on the widget itself once a session is running, so checking progress doesn't require unlocking the phone and reopening the app.
A stretch goal, not a promise: pausing and resuming directly from the widget, without opening the app at all. That one depends on how much Android's widget APIs actually let me do without the whole thing feeling laggy, and I'd rather ship something reliable that does less than something ambitious that misses taps half the time.
What's Not Happening
No animated tree, no streak graphics, no widget that tries to be a mini dashboard. I want it to answer one question at a glance: what's next, and is it running. Taskaro's habit of cutting decoration applies here too. A widget with five things on it is a widget nobody can read from across the room.
It'll also be Android-only to start. Taskaro doesn't have an iOS app yet, so there's nothing to attach an iOS widget to. That's not a permanent stance, it's just the order things actually get built in.
Where This Actually Stands Right Now
I want to be straightforward: there is no focus widget in Taskaro today. This is the reasoning behind building one, not an announcement that it shipped. I'd rather write the "here's why" post honestly while it's still being built than write a feature announcement early and have it not match reality.
The Actual Goal
A good widget doesn't need to do more than the app. It needs to remove the specific friction of opening the app at all for the one action you do most: starting the next session. If it does that one thing reliably, it's already worth shipping.