Focus Settings
What you'll learn
Focus Zone Settings
During a Focus Zone, control whether a distracting website is blocked on the Focus Settings page.
- Alert me about upcoming Focus Zones: during a Focus Zone RescueTime will notify you via a Focus button (Mac only) on your menubar, and a Focus Zone pinned alert on your Assistant. This notification is to nudge you that it's an opportune time to start a Focus Session.
You can also find this setting on the Notifications & Alerts page under Alert Settings > Focus Zone Alert. Enabling this should also enable the option above.
- Block websites during Focus Zones: when this is enabled RescueTime will display a Focus Zone block page in place of a distracting website (website scored or ranked as a Personal Activity on the Activities page). You can learn more about the Focus Zone block page here.
Focus Session Settings
There are a few options for controlling your Focus Sessions. These settings control this particular automatic Focus Session as well as Focus Now.
You spend X minutes within a workday on Personal Activities: when this is enabled and you choose your limit for the time you spend on distracting websites, a Focus Session will automatically start when that limit is reached. You will be in an automatic Focus Session. You can choose for the automatic Focus Session to trigger after 30 minutes, one hour, or two hours by clicking on the edit icon. This will only occur once a day.
- Default Focus Session length: you can choose 15 minutes to 60 minutes as your default Focus Session length.
- This default length applies to this automatic Focus Session as well as Focus Now and Focus Zones.
- Default Focus Session blocking: blocking levels include the following and will affect this automatic Focus Session as well as Focus Now
- No blocking: during a Focus Session activities scored as "Personal and Distracting Activities" will not be blocked
- Block distracting sites and apps: during a Focus Session "Personal and Distracting Activities" will be blocked
- Block distracting + communication sites and apps: during a Focus Session "Personal and Distracting Activities" will be blocked as well as activities categorized as communication apps even if they're scored as "Focus Work" or "Other Work".
Site Blocking Settings
You can view apps and websites you've scored as "Personal" and "Distracting" by clicking on the Preview your block list link. During a Focus Session all these actvities will be blocked.
You can create Blocking Exceptions and RescueTime will not block specific URL's during a Focus Session. For instance, you want to block youtube.com, but you don't want to block https://www.youtube.com/udemy, then you would add that exception here.
Lastly you can choose whether to enforce blocking or not.
If you disable this option Allow website unblocking during Focus Sessions, then when you visit an app or website that you scored as "Personal" or "Distracting", you'll see this Focus Session block page instead and there will be no option to dismiss it. 
Music Integration
Connect your Premium Spotify account to RescueTime so you can enjoy some tunes while you're in a Focus Session.
How to Disable a Focus Zone and Automatic Focus Session
Focus Zone Settings
- Alert me about upcoming Focus Zones: when this is disabled, you will not receive notifications about Focus Zones.
- Block websites during Focus Zones: when this is disabled, you will not receive a Focus Zone block page when you visit a distracting website during a Focus Zone.
Focus Session Settings
- You spend X minutes within a workday in Personal Activities: when this is disabled, a Focus Session will not automatically start.