For writeups, podcasts, threads, and anyone curious.
FocusDex is a macOS focus app with Pokémon-style mechanics. Set a timer and focus. Every five minutes earns a Pokéball. When the timer ends, Safari Mode opens and the creatures that spawned during your session appear on screen — you throw your balls, catch them, and they enter your Pokédex. Your Dex becomes a living diary of the year you spent doing actual work.
Productivity apps used to punish you. Forest grows a tree and kills it if you leave. Focus Friend guilt-trips you over the texts you haven't returned. FocusDex points in the opposite direction — the reward is the game. You focus, you earn Pokéballs, creatures spawn around you, and at the end of the session you get to play. It's not a streak. It's a hobby with receipts.
There are 147 creatures designed for launch, across 15 types — Code, Art, Doc, Pixel, Spirit, Glitch, and more. They're shaped by what you do and where you are: Xcode spawns Code-types, rain spawns Storm-types, a real solar eclipse spawns a Legendary that exists for the duration of the eclipse and then never again. Twelve Legendaries. Eight Mythicals. Some only appear if your streak is long enough to deserve them.
The host of all this is Notchy, a tiny mascot who lives inside the MacBook notch — yellow eyes, mint highlights, friendly Professor Oak energy. He hands you your starter, cheers you on, and watches with quiet concern when you bail. FocusDex isn't trying to be Forest. It's trying to be the Animal Crossing of productivity: low-stakes, daily, beautiful, and the longer you play the more it remembers about you.
Five core brand colors. Click any swatch to copy the hex.
The FocusDex wordmark uses the full brand gradient, animated. On dark backgrounds only.
Notchy lives in the MacBook notch. Yellow eyes, mint highlights. Friendly Professor Oak energy — hands you your starter, celebrates a finished session, glances at you with concern when you bail.
The notch was always supposed to be a window into another world. Notchy makes it one.
Ben Burnette. Indie developer. Macs only. Cooks.
Tip jar: $Dryeetsolutions on Cash App · GitHub: bendawg2010
Open a GitHub issue with [PRESS] in the title. I read every one. Podcasts, writeups, threads, weird angles — all welcome.