Adding new Browsers to Focus

Focus is a distraction blocker that works out of the box with all the popular browsers on your Mac, like Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera and more!

When new browsers become popular, we automatically add them to Focus, so you're always covered.

But sometimes you want to try a new browser and have it work with Focus immediately.

Here's how you can add new browsers to Focus.

Note: this is for more technical users who are comfortable using the Terminal.

Install Dependencies

To add a new browser from the Terminal, you'll need jq installed—a popular command line tool for interacting with JSON files.

The easiest way is to install Homebrew then install jq.

brew install jq

Stop Focus and Backup Settings

Now make sure Focus isn't running and backup the settings.

cp "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Focus/default.cfg" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Focus/default.cfg.$(date +%s)"

Get the bundle identifier from the new browser

Replace /Applications/Google Chrome.app with the location of the new browser you want to block, leaving everything after.

cat "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/Info.plist"| grep CFBundleIdentifier -A 1 | grep string | sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' | xargs

This will output the bundle identifier, for Google Chrome it's

com.google.Chrome

Get the browser type

Most new browsers are based on older browsers—for example, many new browsers are based on Chrome or WebKit (Safari).

If you're not sure which browser it's based on, there's a good chance it's Chrome. Use the correct value for the browser type:

WebKit = 0
Chrome = 1
Opera = 2
Arc = 3

Add new browser

Now that you have the browser bundle identifier and browser type—you're ready to add it to Focus.

Copy and paste the command below, replacing name, bundleIdentifier, and browserType with the correct values. Leave everything else.

Here is how you would add Chrome Beta to Focus:

jq '.blockedBrowsers += [{"name": "Google Chrome Beta", "bundleIdentifier": "com.google.Chrome.beta", "browserType": 1}]' ~/Library/Application\ Support/Focus/default.cfg > ~/Library/Application\ Support/Focus/temp1234.cfg && mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Focus/temp1234.cfg ~/Library/Application\ Support/Focus/default.cfg

Start Focus

Now you can start Focus, and you'll see a permission dialog to block the new browser. Click approve, and you're all set!