A quiet little focus app for ADHD and neurodivergent brains.
Like having a friend up in the loft with you for a "study with me" session, minus the small talk.
Loft Hours is a simple Mac app that helps you actually start (and finish) your work.
You know that thing where you want to focus, you have stuff to do, but you just... can't get your brain to begin? And when you finally do, you blink and three hours are gone and you have no idea if you got anything done?
Loft Hours is built for exactly that. It's a digital body double, that "someone's-here-working-with-me" feeling that makes focusing way easier for a lot of ADHD and neurodivergent folks, packed into one small, calm app.
It does not nag you. It does not gamify your life with streaks and confetti and guilt. It quietly sets up your work session, stays out of your way while you work, and then shows you the receipts of what you actually did. That's it.
Heads up: Loft Hours is version 1.2. It isn't notarized by Apple yet, so the very first time you open it macOS will ask you to confirm. That's a one-time step, walked through below.
- 🔁 Routines — for the parts of your day that run on autopilot. Build a repeating checklist (a morning kickoff, an evening wind-down, anything), give it an emoji, and set when and how often it repeats. When its window comes around, a one-tap Start button shows up on the home screen and opens a calm runner: a countdown plus your checklist to tick off. Finish early whenever, no pressure and no wrap-up. Opt in and it'll gently nudge you when the window opens, and with calendar sync on each routine quietly lands on your Google Calendar as a free event (never marked busy).
- 🗓️ A calendar for your logs — the Logs pane in Review is now a real month grid. Each day fills with a soft color that deepens the more you got done (focus sessions and finished routines both count), and tapping a day shows everything you logged that day, routines included.
- ⏰ Reminders that bend to your week — pick the exact days ("Mon, Wed, Fri") or repeat every few days ("every other day"), on top of the existing once/daily/weekly/monthly. With calendar sync on, reminders mirror to Google Calendar too.
Regular productivity apps assume the hard part is remembering your tasks. For a lot of us, the hard part is starting, staying, and believing we did anything. Loft Hours is designed around those three:
| The struggle | How Loft Hours helps |
|---|---|
| 🚀 Can't start ("task paralysis") | A short, friendly setup asks what you're doing and what "done" looks like, so the mountain becomes one clear step. |
| 👥 Focus feels impossible alone | Body doubling. A visible timer ring + a calm "we're in a session now" mode gives you that someone's-here-with-me push, without an actual person watching. |
| 🌪️ Too many distractions | One click can flip on Do Not Disturb and close your distracting apps, so you don't have to white-knuckle your own willpower. |
| ⏰ Time blindness | The timer shows you exactly where you are in the block, with gentle chimes at the halfway point and the final minute. No surprise time-jumps. |
| 🧠 "I did nothing today" brain | At the end you check off what you finished, and it gets saved. Later, weekly/monthly reviews show you proof of your effort, including the invisible stuff. |
The whole vibe: gentle structure, zero shame.
- Tell it what you're working on. Add one task or a little list ("Today I'm working on... and also..."). Pick how long you want to go (25, 50, 90 minutes, or your own number), or flip on "Just track time" and let a stopwatch count up instead, no planned length needed.
- Decide what "done" looks like. One concrete thing that'll feel finished. This is the secret sauce, it turns "ugh, homework" into "answer questions 1 to 5."
- Set the room (optional). Want Loft Hours to flip on Do Not Disturb and close Slack/Twitter/whatever for you? Say the word. Don't want that? Skip it. Totally up to you.
- Work. A clean focus timer appears. The app goes quiet and lets you cook. Soft chimes mark the halfway point and the last minute.
- Take your break. When the block ends, it checks in: "How's it going?" You can log a note or just breathe.
- Wrap up. Tick off what you finished, and add as many extra "Other" things you did as you want. Loft Hours saves a tidy little log of the session to your computer.
- Go again or call it. Start another block, or finish for the day.
- 👋 A welcome that knows your name — sign in with Google (which hooks up calendar blocking in the same breath) or continue as a guest, tell Loft Hours what to call you, and the home screen greets you with a short, rotating hello that changes with the day (a nudge to start the week on Monday, a lift toward Friday, something slower on the weekend). Change your name anytime in Settings.
- 🎯 Multi-task intake — line up everything you want to tackle, not just one thing.
- ⭕ Visual focus timer — a calm circular countdown so you always know where you are in the block.
- ⏱️ Stopwatch Mode — when a countdown feels like pressure, flip on "Just track time" and the timer counts up instead. Stop whenever you're done and the session logs its real length.
- ⏰ Reminders & "Your day" — set little nudges for tasks ("water the plants") or a gentle "time to focus" ping. Repeat them once, daily, weekly, monthly, on specific weekdays ("Mon, Wed, Fri"), or every few days. Today's reminders live on a tidy timeline on the home screen with a NOW marker, so you can see your day at a glance.
- 🔁 Routines — repeating checklists for the rituals you do on autopilot (a morning kickoff, an evening wind-down). Each gets its own time window, an emoji, and as many little tasks as you want; when the window comes around, a one-tap Start opens a gentle runner with a countdown and your checklist. Opt-in nudges and Google Calendar sync (as a non-busy "free" event) included.
- 🔕 Do Not Disturb toggle — flip your Mac's Focus mode on/off right from the app (one-time setup, see below). If you haven't set it up yet, the home screen gently points you to it instead of failing silently.
- 🚪 App wrangling — auto-close the apps that distract you when a session starts, and reopen them after if you want.
- 📅 Google Calendar blocking (optional) — connect your Google account once, and every focus block drops a "busy" event on your calendar for the length of the timer, titled "Loft Hours - your tasks", so the people who share your calendar can see you're heads-down. Finished blocks stay on your calendar.
- ☕ Break check-ins — a rotating mix of encouragement and gentle body-care reminders (drink water, stretch, rest your eyes) between blocks, never naggy.
- ✅ Done-checklist wrap-up — check off what you finished, and add as many extra "Other" things you did as you want.
- 📝 Automatic session logs — every session is saved as a plain Markdown file in
~/Documents/study-log/. They're yours, readable in any text app, forever. - 📊 Weekly & monthly reviews — see your focused hours, your streak, when you do your best work, and patterns you'd never notice on your own. A built-in Logs pane shows your history as a month calendar that deepens on your busiest days; tap any day to browse every session and routine you logged, goal, done-list, notes and all.
- 🎨 Themes — opens in a warm Light Academia look, with six more curated palettes a click away (Dark Academia, Candlelit Nocturne, Monochrome Magic, Modern Minimalist, Forest Cottagecore, and Linen & Latte).
- 💾 Crash-safe + resume — if your Mac sleeps or quits mid-session, Loft Hours picks up where you left off and can pre-fill your next session from last time.
Your data stays on your machine. There's no account, no cloud, no tracking, and no internet required. The one exception is the optional Google Calendar blocking above: if (and only if) you turn it on and connect your account, Loft Hours talks to Google to add your focus blocks. Leave it off and nothing ever leaves your computer. The logs are always just Markdown files you own.
- A Mac running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer
- An Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, or M4). Loft Hours does not run on older Intel Macs.
- Go to the Releases page and download the latest
Loft-Hours-1.2.dmg. - Double-click the downloaded
.dmgto open it. - Drag the Loft Hours icon onto the Applications folder in the window that pops up.
- Open your Applications folder and try to launch Loft Hours.
If it opens, you're done! 🎉 If macOS throws up a scary warning instead, that's expected, keep reading. 👇
Don't worry, the app is fine. This warning shows up because Loft Hours is an indie app that hasn't paid Apple's $99/year "notarization" fee yet. macOS is cautious about apps it doesn't recognize, so it puts up a gate the first time only. Here's how to get through it.
- Open your Applications folder.
- Right-click (or Control-click) the Loft Hours icon.
- Choose Open from the menu.
- A dialog appears, this time with an Open button. Click it.
That's it. From now on it opens normally, like any other app.
Apple changed this in the newest macOS, so do this instead:
- Try to open Loft Hours once (let it get blocked).
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
- Scroll to the bottom. You'll see a message like "Loft Hours was blocked." Click Open Anyway next to it.
- Confirm, then launch Loft Hours again. Done.
If you'd rather just clear the flag in one command:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Loft Hours.app"Then open the app normally. (No idea what a terminal is? Totally fine, use one of the click-based methods above.)
The DND toggle works by running a little macOS Shortcut (Apple doesn't let apps flip Focus mode directly). Good news: you don't have to build anything by hand. Loft Hours can install the ready-made shortcuts for you in one click. (If you ever flip the toggle before this is set up, the home screen will show a little reminder pointing you right here.)
- Open Loft Hours and click the gear (Settings) icon.
- Go to the Environment tab.
- Turn on the Do Not Disturb toggle, then click Install shortcuts.
- The Shortcuts app pops up to confirm the import, click through it, and you'll see a "Focus shortcuts installed" ✅ checkmark back in Settings.
That's it, the DND toggle now works. Don't want any of this? Just leave the toggle off, everything else works fine without it.
Prefer your own shortcuts? Open Advanced: shortcut names in that same section and point Loft Hours at any shortcuts you've made yourself.
Small honesty note: the DND switch remembers the last command it sent, not your Mac's true Focus state. If you change Focus from Control Center or your iPhone, the switch might look out of sync. That's a macOS limitation, not a bug, every app that does this has it.
- 🖼️ The app icon may show up blank on the left side of notifications. Cosmetic only, fixed once the app gets signed. Sounds and chimes work regardless.
- 🔔 Notification permission may not stick between launches on this unsigned build. Also a signing thing, coming in a later release.
- 💻 Apple Silicon only for now. Intel support can be added if a tester needs it.
Found something else? Open an issue, it really helps.
Loft Hours runs entirely on your Mac. No sign-up, no servers, no analytics. The only time anything leaves your computer is if you choose to turn on the optional Google Calendar blocking and connect your account, in which case Loft Hours adds your focus blocks to your Google Calendar (and nothing else). Leave that feature off and the app is fully offline. Your session logs are plain Markdown files in ~/Documents/study-log/ that you can read, edit, back up, or delete anytime.
Loft Hours is free to download and use for your own personal focus sessions. The app and its source code are All Rights Reserved, see LICENSE. Short version: enjoy the app all you want, but the code stays mine, no copying, modifying, redistributing, or selling it without permission.
Made with care for brains that work a little differently. 💛
Now go have a good Loft Hour.