FocusFlight Turns the Pomodoro Timer Into a Flight You Can Board
FocusFlight (专注飞机) is an iOS focus app made by two people, turning the Pomodoro timer into a flight. It launched on January 21, 2025, and now carries 43,000 ratings with a 4.8 score in the Chinese region.
Opening it doesn't feel like setting an alarm.
First select a home airport as the departure point, then a destination, set the duration, choose the intention (study, work, creation), and finally generate a boarding pass.
Tear from the middle with your finger, and the countdown starts.
The boarding pass prints the airport code, seat number, boarding time, and the kilometers of this route.
During the flight, the screen is a 3D map, and the plane moves forward along the route bit by bit.
If you want to see out the window, switch to the window view. Below is a satellite map matched to the heading; flying to Paris, you can really see the Eiffel Tower.
This part was done in the 2.0 version on June 7, 2026.
Landing leaves a flight log: where you took off, where you landed, how long you focused, how many kilometers you flew, and you can write a note.
Miles accumulate to upgrade the membership card, and the card face changes.
It also has a second capability: it hooks into Apple's Screen Time, blocking distracting apps and websites during the focus session, keeping them out of the cabin.
With this lock added to the timer, the phone really becomes a cabin.
Launched in January 2025, the developer wrote a design article on SSpai in March, product lead Una appeared on Hardcore Hackers to talk about ASO in May, won the "Best Creative Award" in Xiaohongshu's indie developer competition in August, and was promoted by Apple as "App of the Day" that year.
On June 7, 2026, version 2.0 launched, adding the 3D map window view, flight log notes, 8 ambient sounds and 3 focus music tracks, and also arrived on macOS.
Version 2.1.2 on November 3 changed the home page and adapted to new device sizes.
Store data seen on November 9, 2026: universal across Apple platforms, requires iOS 17 or later, install size 273 MB, six languages.
The team is two people, Una and Sidney. Una's day job is head of App Store operations at Xmind.
Repeated themes in store reviews: wanting cabin announcements and a pre-takeoff voice, wanting a count-up timer, wanting an airport collection to see which airports you've visited.
Some also think the subscription locks too much, and others report that after swiping the app away in the background, the Dynamic Island on the phone still shows the timer, but the restrictions stop working.
All the requests lean toward "make it feel more like a real flight," which shows there's still room in the simulation.
How are the paid features designed?
Download is free. The subscription is called the All Access Plan, 18 yuan per month, 88 yuan per year. The in-app purchase list also has three lifetime buyout tiers from 78 to 128 yuan.
Timers, routes, and boarding passes work without paying. What you pay for is the completeness of the entire journey.
What references can it offer?
One: sell the feeling, not the feature
Focus, Pomodoro, timer are long a red ocean. Forest, Tomato Todo, OffScreen stand in a row.
"Flying is the easiest time to focus" is a concrete bodily experience. Make it a product, and the entry point is no longer in the feature list.
Two: the product person understands distribution
On Hardcore Hackers EP102, Una broke ASO into a funnel: search traffic accounts for over 65% of downloads, brand words should repeatedly appear in the title, subtitle, and the 100-character keyword field, so the algorithm indexes you first. Long-tail words go down to scenario words like "ADHD", "postgraduate exam", "exam prep".
Three: use screenshots as ad space
Only the first three images show in search results. She suggests writing the target group's scenarios directly into the image. During postgraduate exam season, emphasize that.
The store's first-image layout is also arranged according to this thinking.
Four: don't be shy with the rating prompt
She set the prompt threshold very low: tap the stars and close it, no need to jump to the store.
In May 2025, she said the rating rate was about 5%, with nearly 1,700 global reviews. More than half a year later, China's single store has 43,000 ratings.
Five: make Xiaohongshu a channel, not an ad slot
The app has an entry. Users post notes and submit links; after review, they get a membership. This is positive incentive, not touching the fake-review line.
The cost is also on the table: once the name becomes a traffic word, copycats come faster than users.
On the Yingyongbao page searched in November 2026, that "FocusFlight" is version 1.0.1 from Shenzhen Shuohan Technology Co., Ltd., with 4,091 downloads, and the features are crammed with meditation relaxation and custom destinations.
Next to it is a "FocusFlight Plan", a schedule management app made by a Changsha company.
FocusFlight on Google Play is a minimalist timer, version number already at 2.8.9.
The three domains focusflight.net, .io, .org each host a free web version in ten languages, all eating the search traffic of this term.
In the Apple store, similar apps are rising: Deepfocus, AirFocus all carry the flight-focus name.
What can be defended are only two things: the brand, and a product that keeps updating.
The product keeps updating, but the brand has already been divided.
If you want to try it, search "FocusFlight" on the App Store, or go to https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/id6648771147.
What do you think of this product idea? Welcome to comment below.
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Top 1 of 3 from juejin.cn, machine-translated. The original thread is authoritative.
This product is decent, but it costs money.
It's hard to make a good-quality product that's free.
Paid products aren't necessarily good quality either.