Focus timer vs Sit Still
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Focus timer
Enhance concentration with a Pomodoro-style timer. Choose from various ambient sounds to create a focused work or study environment. Customize focus and break durations, and receive end-of-timer reminders with a selection of sounds.
- Pomodoro timer with customizable intervals
- Ambient soundscapes for focus
- Customizable focus and break times
- End-of-timer reminders with sound options
- Minimalist interface with flip animation
- Background running support
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Focus timer is a tomato timer based app that helps you concentrate on your work and study. When you want to start concentrating on, you can choose an environment, accompanied by beaches, trains, rainy days, bonfire, country cricket sounds, and you will be comfortable concentrating on. Features: - Tomato timer, break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. - Support custom time, easy to set the focus time, rest time. - Set the reminder after the end of the timer, a variety of sounds to choose from. - Minimal interface design, timer display clear with flip animation - Supports background running
Sit Still
This app helps you focus by blocking distracting applications and providing a calming timer experience. Earn rewards to unlock cozy rooms and accessories for your virtual cat companion. Track your screen time and set daily goals to improve your productivity.
- App blocking modes (Open, Whitelist, Strict)
- Customizable timer (Countdown, Open-ended, Pomodoro)
- Virtual cat companion with unlockable accessories
- Collection of illustrated rooms with unique soundscapes
- Screen time tracking and analysis
- Task list syncing with Reminders
- Widgets and wallpapers
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Sit Still is a focus timer and app blocker that gives you somewhere to be. Most focus apps punish you, Sit Still keeps you company. A cat sleeps in a painted room while you work, and the reward for sitting still is a collection you build. Blocking is real, and as firm as you want it to be. The rooms are the heart of it: watercolour illustrations painted like the pages of a childhood picture book, meant to feel cozy and nostalgic — to stir a memory of being small and safe somewhere — each with its own soundscape. APP BLOCKING FEATURES Three app blocking modes for a focus session: Open, Whitelist and Strict. App blocking rules put away the apps that keep distracting you throughout the day: on a schedule of your own, held to a daily limit, or right away with a quick block. You can also set a bedtime lock on a night schedule you choose. Before you switch off a lock that is running, take a moment with the cat — or turn on hard mode, and it holds until it ends. With the deletion lock on, no app can be deleted during a hard-mode block, so Sit Still can't be removed to end it early. YOUR SCREEN TIME, IN THE SHIELD TAB See where your time went, day by day and week by week: your most-used apps, each with its own chart, the categories your hours went to, and what a lifetime at this pace adds up to. Set a daily goal and the cat keeps an eye on your day. WALLPAPERS AND WIDGETS Any room you have can be saved to your Photos as a wallpaper, drawn at the full resolution of your phone or iPad, with your cat in the corner or without it. There are widgets too: the room you are sitting in with your focus stats under it, the collection with a different room every hour, a calendar of the month with your cat beside it, and your streak on the Lock Screen and in StandBy. A TIMER WITH THREE SHAPES Countdown, open-ended, or pomodoro. The pomodoro starts at the classic 25 / 5 / 15, and all three lengths are yours to change. A session carries on with the screen locked, and shows itself on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. A COLLECTION OF ROOMS A permanent collection of rooms, from a bookshop loft in Porto to a stilt house on the Mekong Delta, and two new rooms on the first of every month that leave with it. Every room has its own illustration and its own ambience loop, levelled against all the others so changing rooms is never a lurch. On iPad and iPhone Duo, every room opens out into a wide painting, upright or sideways. A CAT, AND THINGS FOR IT TO WEAR Six companions, hand-drawn and animated. Focusing earns whiskers, and whiskers buy cat accessories and the monthly rooms. Pet the cat and it notices. WHAT YOU NEED TO DO, AND WHAT YOU DID A task list that stays in sync with your phone's own Reminders. A record of every session — hours, streaks, and the note you left about what you were working on. Sit Still Premium is an auto-renewing subscription, offered monthly or yearly at the price shown in the app. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and can be managed or cancelled in Settings › your Apple Account › Subscriptions. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://alteraapps.com/sit-still/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Sit Still at none against Focus timer's shown. Sit Still also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs every 5 weeks) and review sentiment (100% vs 77%). Focus timer's advantage is ratings volume (1.9K vs 2) and device support (4 vs 2). On price, rating, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Focus timer sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Sit Still sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Focus timer against 4.5 for Sit Still. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Focus timer has 1.9K ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 77% of Focus timer's written reviews are positive against 100% of Sit Still's.
Focus timer ships an update every 5 weeks, Sit Still every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on November 11, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Focus timer | Sit Still |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (1.9K ratings) — better | 4.5 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 76.9% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1.9K — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 44 MB | 180 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 书敏 贾 | Johannes Butzke |
Customer experience
Focus timer
Sit Still
Bugs and requests
Focus timer
Reported bugs
2 issues- Timer stops when device is locked or app is minimized
- Inconsistent timer behavior when switching between apps
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to set custom alarm/notification sounds
- Option to disable background sounds
- Automatic start/stop of focus and break timers
- Customizable timer duration
- Dark mode or theme options
Sit Still
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Focus timer
- Professional Version$2.99
Sit Still
- Monthly$4.991 Month
- Yearly$34.991 Year









