Drag and Drop

When we get into the zone and experience unbreakable focus, sometimes we accidentally come across a distracting website or app.

If neither of them are already blocked by your anti-distraction software, you might start panicking.

“Oh NO! I’m so tempted to just waste my hard work and lose myself in this newfound distraction. What will I do?”

Even worse is when your anti-distraction app is so locked in you can’t make any changes while working.

Focus circumvents this common problem with an easy-to-use “drag n’ drop” option.

What Happens When I Drag And Drop A Website Onto Focus?

When Focus is active, you can drag a website by selecting the entire URL and dragging it directly onto the Focus menubar icon:

Look at how PRODUCTIVE I am right now!

When you do this, you will see the following window pop up:

By default, Focus will block the entire domain and all of its pages.

However, Focus gives you the option to instead block the specific page on that domain.

This can be toggled by clicking the icon which looks like a chain link (🔗):

But for the sake of argument, let’s go ahead and block the entire domain:

Success! Whenever Focus is activated, it will now automatically block this website in future sessions unless we remove it from the list of websites to block:

If you want more information on customization options for blocking very specific URLs, please see the URL Blocking page.

USING THE “DRAG AND DROP” FEATURE IN FOCUS WHEN THE WHITELIST IS ACTIVATED

Everything described in the previous section happens when you are using a Blacklist (i.e. blocking websites you don’t want access to).

Let’s see what happens when you using a Whitelist via the Allowed Sites feature (i.e. blocking the entire Internet except for specific sites you want access to):

Oh goodie! A YouTube video I can watch to pretend I’m actually doing something important

As with using a Blacklist, you have the option to block an entire domain or a specific webpage:

Let’s go ahead and allow ONLY this YouTube video.

Access has returned! As you can see, Focus will only allow this specific URL for the video to be available:

Attempting to access the rest of the YouTube domain will fail:

NOTE: When you are using the Allowed Sites feature, your computer may lag a little bit as Focus is working to block everything except for the sites you want to browse. If you have multiple tabs open, the process will be slowed down.

Can I Drag And Drop Distracting Applications Into Focus?

Absolutely!

While Focus is running, you can drag time-wasting applications onto the Focus menubar in the same way you would with time-wasting websites.

Please see the Blocking Applications page for more information on how to do this.

How Does The “Drag And Drop” Feature Work In Focus When Hardcore Mode Is Enabled?

The drag and drop feature in Focus works differently when Hardcore Mode is enabled.

If you are using a Blacklist while Focus is running, you can still drag and drop websites you would like to block.

However, once the website is added to the Blacklist, you cannot remove this website from it until the timer or schedule runs outs.

If you are using a Whitelist while Focus is running, it’s the opposite.

You can remove websites from your Whitelist (thereby blocking access to them), but you cannot add any new websites to the Whitelist.