Focus Guard Download for Mac

Setup guide

Five minutes. Everything runs on your Mac. The app walks you through the same checks the first time you open it.

01Install

Download for Mac

Unzip it, drag Focus Guard into Applications, and open it. It's signed and notarized by Apple. Needs macOS 15 or later, Intel or Apple silicon.

02Permissions

  • Accessibility: reads window titles so it knows which app and tab you're in.
  • Screen Recording: reads the words on screen when a title is vague. Nothing is kept as images or sent anywhere as screenshots.
  • Automation: your browser asks once, so it can read the current tab's address.

After you allow Screen Recording, macOS may ask you to quit and reopen the app. That's normal.

03Claude Code

AI Analysis, the hourly goal check and urgent alerts all run through Claude Code on your Mac, using your Claude plan. No extra bill.

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

Then run it once and sign in:

claude

Back in Focus Guard, press Check again. If it still says it's not working, see Troubleshooting.

04Faster checker key optional

Every couple of minutes a small AI looks at what's on screen and asks: is this your task? Without a key, Claude Code does it: free, a bit slower.

For quick answers, make a key at openrouter.ai/keys, add a few dollars of credit, and paste it into the setup screen. It costs about 2¢ an hour of use. The key stays in your Mac's Keychain.

05Connect Claude to all your work

When you press AI Analysis, Focus Guard asks Claude Code for a gut check: what should be NOW, what to cut, where you really are. Its advice is only as good as what it can see.

Give Claude Code the same connectors (MCP servers) you use for work, so the gut check is based on your real progress, not just your to-do list.

  • Analytics (PostHog, Mixpanel…): signups, activation, retention.
  • Money (Stripe): revenue and failed payments.
  • Hosting (Railway, Vercel, GitHub): is it up, what shipped.
  • Email, calendar, Slack: replies you owe, deadlines coming up.
  • Notes (Notion, your memory files): past decisions.

Add them in Claude Code with claude mcp add, or connect them on claude.ai. Focus Guard only ever reads through them. Its prompts forbid writes, deploys and sending anything.

06Goals that measure themselves

Add a goal (the + next to GOALS) and write, in plain words, how to count it. For example:

Count total signups in PostHog for my app, all time.

Every hour Claude reads the number and moves the bar. Give the goal a daily task ("Post 3 videos + DM 20 people") and it comes back to the top of your list each morning.

07Good habits

  • Write "done when" on NOW. A finish line beats a vague task.
  • Link tasks to a goal so every task shows the needle it moves.
  • Write the result when you tick something off. AI Analysis reads it to see if work actually paid off.
  • Name your side projects well: add the app, repo and site names in their notes, so side work is recognized.
  • Pause, don't quit. Pauses end by themselves, so you never forget to turn it back on.

08Troubleshooting

  • "Claude Code isn't installed": run the install command above, then Check again. Focus Guard looks in ~/.local/bin/claude and your shell's PATH.
  • "Not signed in": run claude in Terminal and finish the login.
  • Other errors: run claude doctor to see what's wrong.
  • It stopped noticing what I do: after an update, macOS can drop permissions. Open Settings → setup checklist and allow them again.
  • No urgent alerts appear: turn on notifications for Focus Guard in System Settings → Notifications.