Are you like me, constantly bombarded by notifications on your Apple device, but hesitant to turn them off completely? Fear not, because I’ve got the perfect solution for you – introducing “Focus” a tool I’ve crafted to enhance your concentration while you’re on your Mac laptop. I know the name isn’t very original, but this is just the first of a suite of tools that I’m building.

A little bit of background, in case you haven’t noticed from my site, my work is in DevOps/SRE/Platform engineering and as such requires me to be aware of any issues to the services and teams that I support. I have a bit of fear that if I disable notifications, that I may miss a major incident or a message from a colleague that needs my support. It’s a bit of an unhealthy relationship with notifications, I admit, but that’s precisely why I built Focus.

The driving force behind Focus was my desire to activate Mac’s Do Not Disturb mode for shorter durations, say 15 or 30 minutes. DND only provides a limited option of 1 hour or until the next morning and I didn’t want to risk forgetting to turn it off and miss important notifications. Enter Focus, a nifty command line tool allowing you to set any custom duration for DND. As a bonus, it discreetly hides the App Dock to keep distractions at bay.

While Focus started as a simple CLI tool, my grand vision is to evolve it into a full-fledged “virtual assistant” application. You’ll actually find Focus in a repo named “Alfred”, which is a hint at what’s to come. I’m working on integrating features like updating your Slack status and responding to messages for you during DND. Imagine having a virtual assistant that not only respects your focus time but also keeps your digital world in check.

Excited for more? I’m brewing up some intriguing features! Post-DND session, instead of drowning in a sea of missed messages on Slack, imagine a feature that summarizes them for you. And with Alfred’s Slack integration, picture being able to seek assistance in troubleshooting issues or generate boilerplate code seamlessly.

Alright, enough teasing about what’s in the pipeline. If you’re itching to give Focus a spin on your laptop, head over to my Github repo HERE. You’ll find installation instructions and a guide on how to make the most of it. Got any issues or cool feature ideas? Drop me a line via email or whatever other line of communication you have for me. Stay tuned for new features. Until then, have fun and stay focused.