FocusWord vs Nana's Focus
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
FocusWord
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Your phone was designed to scatter your attention. FocusWord reverses the equation. FocusWord presents your books one word at a time on a full dark screen. Each word is positioned at its Optimal Recognition Point. Smart Slowing pauses naturally at sentence boundaries. Your phone becomes a place of focus instead of distraction. No willpower required. No fighting notifications. Just you and the words. IMPORT YOUR BOOKS Import any EPUB from your device. Navigate chapters. Track your reading progress. This is a real reading app for people who actually read books. READ AT YOUR PACE Adjust speed from 100 to 1000 WPM — whatever pace lets you focus completely. Start slow, build up naturally. Smart Slowing adapts to punctuation so the rhythm feels like reading, not a metronome. DESIGNED FOR FOCUS One word. Full screen. Zero distractions. Auto-hiding controls disappear within milliseconds. Gesture-only interaction while reading. The app becomes invisible so the book can take over. BUILT FOR BRAINS THAT WORK DIFFERENTLY ADHD-friendly design. VoiceOver support. Right-to-left reading. Reduce Motion compatibility. Focus isn't a character trait you lack — it was just never properly supported. BUY ONCE. READ FOREVER. No subscriptions. No ads. No dark patterns. No account required. One purchase, unlimited books, every feature. Your books stay on your device. Your data stays yours. FocusWord features: • One-word-at-a-time focused reading • Smart Slowing at sentences and clauses • 100–1000 WPM speed control • Full EPUB import and parsing • Chapter navigation with progress tracking • Reading position auto-save • Dark interface (WCAG AA contrast) • Accessibility: VoiceOver, RTL, Reduce Motion • Gesture controls: tap, swipe, long-press • iPhone and iPad
Nana's Focus
This app helps you study your own texts with multiple reading modes and spaced repetition flashcards. It includes guided breathing exercises and optional background noise to aid focus. Track your study progress and learn effective study techniques.
- Multiple reading modes (Spot, Line, Traditional)
- Spaced repetition flashcards from highlights
- Guided breathing exercises
- Optional steady pink noise generator
- Study progress tracking
- Nine 'How to study' lessons
- Supports various file formats (PDF, EPUB, DOCX, etc.)
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Nana's Focus is a reader for studying from your own texts. It does not promise you will read three times faster, because that would not be true. It looks after something plainer. Three pages in, you should still have the first one. Three ways to read, because different things slip away from different people. Spot: words arrive one at a time, in one place on the screen. Your eyes stop wandering, because there's nowhere to wander to. Line: the whole sentence in front of you, with a pointer leading your eye underneath. Traditional reading: a plain page at your own pace. This is where you drag your finger over what you need to know. A breath before reading. In through the nose, a short sip more on top, then a long breath out through the mouth. The out-breath has to be longer than both in-breaths together, because the whole thing rests on that proportion. One minute, three or five, and you can turn it off. Noise in the background, if it happens to help you. Steady pink noise, generated as it plays, so your ear never catches a loop. Here is the honest version of where this stands: in a 2024 pooling of thirteen studies, steady noise improved performance for people with ADHD and made it worse for people without. The gain was small, and it varied a lot between individuals. Turn it on for one session and see for yourself. Highlights become cards. Drag your finger across a sentence and pick what it is: a definition, a date, a key point, or "I don't get it". The app writes questions from the first three. From the last one it writes nothing, because there's no point cramming what you don't understand. Cards come back to fit the date. Give the app your exam date and it spreads the reviews so the last round lands before the exam, not after it. The closer the date, the more often the questions come back. The Study tab works out how much you have to read each day to get through the material in time. It leaves the final days for reviews alone, because a chapter read once isn't enough. Nine lessons called "How to study". Active recall, spaced repetition, desirable difficulty, prequestions and more. Each lesson says how much evidence stands behind it, and where the evidence is thin it says so. Six ways to remember. For the things that have to come back word for word, or in order. None of them will help you understand a text, and the first screen says so before you start. At the end of every sitting, one question: what stayed with you, in one sentence, out of your own head. That is how remembering works. Read your own: PDF, EPUB, FB2, MOBI, DOCX, txt, or text you paste in. That is what this app is for. One short text is waiting on the shelf to start with, "Evening in the building", the same passage you read during the reading test, so the shelf isn't empty on the first day. No account in the app, and no sign-in. Your texts, highlights, cards and progress stay on your phone, because there's no server for them to go to. What this app doesn't do: it doesn't speed your reading up and it doesn't claim to switch off the voice in your head. The popular advice about silencing that voice isn't backed by the research, and the app says so plainly. Trial and purchase You turn on seven days of the full version whenever you like, with no card and no account. Until then, the free version works. After that it's one purchase, once and for good: 29.00 USD. No subscription. The purchase unlocks the whole app. Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy: https://nanas.pro/legal/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: FocusWord at none against Nana's Focus's 2. On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. Nana's Focus sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. FocusWord asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for FocusWord against 5.0 for Nana's Focus. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | FocusWord | Nana's Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 24 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Marcelo Alves | Adrian Skobiej |
In-app purchases
FocusWord
No in-app purchases
Nana's Focus
- Monthly access$3.991 Month
- Full access, for good$29.00









