Tomodo vs Focus4Life
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Tomodo
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Tomodo: Your Minimalist Pomodoro Companion Stay focused and productive with Tomodo’s clean, modern design. While simple on the surface, Tomodo is packed with features: customize your timer, track your progress, and enjoy smart, intuitive controls that make your Pomodoro sessions seamless and distraction-free. Tomodo adapts to your needs and helps you achieve your goals, one session at a time. Thoughtful touches like gentle alert sounds and dark mode support elevate this free app above its paid competitors. Built by an experienced iOS developer who has been creating apps since 2009, Tomodo reflects over a decade of expertise and a commitment to high-quality, user-friendly design. Created for fun—not profit—Tomodo is **completely free: no ads, no hidden fees, and no subscriptions. Key Features: • Minimalist Design: A clean, distraction-free layout with large, bold countdown numbers and a sleek circular progress bar. • Customizable Durations: Adjust focus and break times to fit your work style and goals. • Progress & Goals: Track your completed sessions and set daily targets with just a tap. • Smart Controls: Start, pause, continue, or end your session easily. Tomodo remembers your settings and keeps running even if you switch apps. • Gentle Alerts & Reminders: Get notified when your session ends—no matter where you are in the app, so you never miss a beat. • Dark Mode & Dynamic Type: Enjoy a beautifully consistent look that respects your device’s settings and accessibility preferences. Focus better, achieve more, and enjoy a cleaner path to productivity with Tomodo.
Focus4Life
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Focus4Life turns scattered days into focused ones. A Pomodoro timer, a real task planner and a distraction blocker in one calm app — no ads, no account, and it works completely offline. WHY IT'S QUIET Focus4Life doesn't run on anxiety. No punishing streaks, no guilt, no noise. Its timings and limits come from published research and from the original authors of each technique, and the research-backed settings carry an (i) with the source behind them. FOUR RHYTHMS, EACH WITH A REASON • Classic — 25 / 5 / 15, Cirillo's original technique • Deep Work — 50 / 10 / 30, after Cal Newport's "Deep Work" • Sprint — 15 / 3 / 10, a low-resistance way into a hard task • Ultradian — 90 / 20, the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle (Kleitman; Lavie) • A live countdown on your Lock Screen — and in the Dynamic Island on iPhones that have one — drawn by iOS itself, so it costs almost no battery • A gentle heads-up when a task runs past the limits research links to fatigue FOCUS LOCK — IT ACTUALLY STOPS YOU • Block distracting apps — and websites in Safari — during a session using Apple Screen Time: a real, system-enforced shield, fully opt-in, and only while a focus phase is running • Choose gentle friction or a firm block, per session or for good • Flip your phone face-down to drop straight into focus, and get a nudge if you pick it up too soon • Never during a break. Never while you're paused. Never without a permission you granted yourself A REAL TASK PLANNER, NOT A CHECKLIST • Priorities, due dates and repeats — daily, weekdays, weekly or monthly, ending never, on a date, or after a set number of times • Estimate a task and the app works out how many pomodoros it needs • Today, Week and Month views; on iPad, Week and Month list your actual tasks under each day • Notes on any task • Nothing reschedules itself behind your back. Overdue work is a count and a button, never a scolding PROJECTS WITH SOMETHING TO FILL Group tasks into colour-coded projects, each with an optional note on when and where you'll do the work — an “implementation intention”, shown to make follow-through markedly more likely (Gollwitzer, 1999). Give a project a goal image, estimate its tasks, and the image uncovers itself as you focus your way through the estimate. A GARDEN THAT REMEMBERS Every finished session uncovers part of a hidden picture, and longer sessions uncover more. A quiet record of effort — not a leaderboard, and not a plant that dies if you take a day off. Missing a day never takes anything away. HONEST STATS Minutes focused, sessions completed, tasks done, and your longest single session — for today and the last 7 days. Pro adds 30-day and all-time history, plus a breakdown of which apps interrupted you. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Works fully offline — no account, no sign-up, nothing in the cloud • Your data stays on your device • No ads. Not now, not ever. ONE APP, EVERY SCREEN iPhone, iPad and Mac, each running the same app with the same calm. Every device keeps its own data on itself — there is no cloud and nothing to sign in to. FOCUS4LIFE PRO Free covers the whole core loop: unlimited sessions, all four research presets, the entire task planner with repeats and notes, two projects, the Garden, and flip-to-focus. Pro is a one-time purchase — not a subscription — and unlocks unlimited projects, the full focus blocker, 30-day and all-time stats, custom timer durations, and your own photos in the Garden. It comes with a 7-day trial that asks for no payment card and simply ends. We'd love your feedback — reach us anytime at phan.business.nl@gmail.com.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Tomodo at none against Focus4Life's 2. Focus4Life's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs monthly). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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. Focus4Life sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Tomodo asks for nothing beyond the download.
Tomodo ships an update monthly, Focus4Life weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 6, 2026 and September 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Tomodo | Focus4Life |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 16.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 35 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Karoly Nyisztor | Tu Anh Phan |
In-app purchases
Tomodo
No in-app purchases
Focus4Life
- Focus4Life Pro — Lifetime$17.99
- Focus4Life Pro — Lifetime$34.99









