How many hours did you actually focus today? Not scroll, not sit at your desk, not attend meetings — but truly focus. If you have ever finished a busy day feeling like you accomplished nothing, that question probably stings a little. A good deep work timer app does not fix that feeling overnight, but it does something more useful: it shows you the truth. Deep Focus is an Android app built around that idea — measure your focus time honestly, watch it accumulate, and let the data turn effort into habit.
What Is Deep Work (and Why Does Tracking It Matter)?
Cal Newport popularized the term in his 2016 book Deep Work. He defines it as “professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit.” The opposite — shallow work — covers the low-value tasks that fill most of our days: notifications, quick replies, routine admin.
The problem is that deep work hours are invisible. You can feel productive without actually being productive. Tracking changes that. When you log every focused session, patterns emerge fast. You realize that Tuesday mornings are your peak, that you rarely hit two solid hours on Fridays, and that your “I worked all day” feeling sometimes amounts to forty minutes of real focus.
That awareness alone is worth something. And once you start measuring, you start protecting those hours.
Introducing Deep Focus
Deep Focus is a clean, no-fuss deep work timer app for Android and iOS. There are no rigid Pomodoro intervals, no forced breaks, no gamified streaks that feel hollow. You pick a project, tap start, and the timer runs until you stop it. Every session is stored and tied to the project you chose.
What makes it useful over time is not the timer itself — it is the record it builds. Heatmaps, weekly bar charts, monthly calendars, project totals: these accumulate quietly in the background and give you something concrete to look back on.
Key Features of This Deep Work Timer App
Focus Timer — One Tap to Start Measuring Deep Work
The timer screen is intentionally minimal. Select a project, tap Start Focus, and the clock runs. Pause and resume any time. A keep-screen-on option lets you set the phone face-up on your desk and let it tick without the screen going dark.
When you end a session, you can optionally write a short memo — a line or two about what you worked on. It is optional, so it never gets in the way. But flipping back through those notes later is surprisingly useful for spotting what kinds of work actually move the needle.
At the top of the timer screen you will also see today’s daily goal progress bar. If your goal is two hours and you have logged ninety minutes, the bar is at 45%. Hit the goal and the app lets you know. It is a small moment, but it feels good every time.
Project-Based Time Tracking — See Where Your Hours Actually Go
One of the most valuable features in Deep Focus is its project management system. Before you start a session, you assign it to a project — something like “Dissertation,” “Side Project,” or “Language Learning.” Each project gets a color, so you can tell them apart at a glance.
Every minute you log goes toward that project’s running total. Open any project and you will see the cumulative hours invested alongside a full session history. This makes it easy to answer questions you probably cannot answer right now: How many hours have I actually put into this? or Which project has been eating most of my week?
You can mark projects complete when they are done and reopen them if needed. Nothing is deleted unless you choose to delete it.
Heatmap and Statistics — Your Focus Pattern, Visualized
The statistics screen is where Deep Focus earns its keep as a long-term deep work timer app. The centerpiece is a GitHub-style activity heatmap covering the past twelve weeks. Each day is colored by how much deep work you logged:
- 10+ minutes — light activity
- 30+ minutes — moderate activity
- 1+ hour — high activity
- 2+ hours — maximum activity
Glancing at the heatmap tells you more in two seconds than any journal could. A week of pale squares is an honest signal that something got in the way. A month of deepening color means the habit is holding.
Beyond the heatmap, there is a weekly bar chart showing output by day of the week, a monthly calendar view, and a period summary that breaks down your total time, session count, and active days for today, this week, this month, or this year. Everything updates automatically after each session.
What It Feels Like After a Week
Skepticism is reasonable when you first download a productivity app. Here is what actually happens with Deep Focus after consistent use.
By day three or four, you start thinking twice before opening your phone during a session. The timer is running, and stopping it for no good reason feels wasteful. That resistance — that friction against distraction — is exactly what the app is trying to create.
By the end of the first week, the heatmap starts to show a pattern. Seeing even a row of light-colored squares is satisfying enough to make you want to fill in the next one. And if there is a gap, the visual is honest about it in a way that words in a journal are not.
Download Deep Focus
Final Thoughts
The best way to do more deep work is to start by seeing how little you are currently doing. That is not a criticism — it is the same realization most people have in the first week. Once you see the number, you want to move it.
A deep work timer app like Deep Focus does not promise a transformation. It promises an honest record. From there, the motivation to improve tends to take care of itself. The heatmap fills in. The streak holds. The hours compound.
Starting today is as simple as tapping a button.