Yappie: Focus Timer & Pet

Yappie is a focus app for Windows and Mac. You start a timed focus session and a small pet sits beside the timer while you work, then suggests a break when you have earned one. It is made for people who find it hard to get started, and for people who work better with someone nearby.

What you can do with it:

• Run focus sessions with breaks, Pomodoro style or at your own length. Minimalist mode leaves just the timer, and a small pop-out pet can sit in a corner of your screen while you work in other apps.
• Plan with Today, Tomorrow and recurring tasks, projects and tags, and break a big task into small steps with time estimates. An optional helper can suggest the steps for you.
• Focus with other people: one-on-one co-focus with a friend, study groups with a shared room and daily and weekly goals, and focus with a stranger, a quiet room with someone else who is working right now. Nobody is on camera, and there is no open chat: friends send short preset cheers.
• Rest without losing progress. Book a weekly day off or a longer break and your streak holds. Streak freezes cover a day you did not plan for.
• See progress add up over months: streaks, levels, charts, a year of focus in one view, and a sky of hidden constellations that fills in as you work.
• Play focus soundtracks, pick a background scene, and change your pet's colour and look.

Free and paid: the free plan has no time limit and needs no card. The timer, tasks and steps, streaks, growth, charts, time off, friends, co-focus, study groups and cloud sync are all free. The paid plans (Yappie Lite, Yappie Super and Yappie Super Family) add a premium pet look and wardrobe, more scenes, soundtracks and constellations, a bigger daily allowance for the optional helper, and, on Super, three signed-in devices instead of one. Super Family is Super for five people.

Privacy: Yappie is local-first. Solo use works offline with no account. An account is needed only for sync, the social features, the hosted helper and paid plans. There are no ads, and your data is not sold.

Good to know: Yappie does not block apps or websites, so it sits fine next to a blocker. The phone apps are built but not yet in the app stores. Some of it also runs in a browser with no account: a Pomodoro timer, focus with a friend and focus with a stranger. Available in 25 languages. Made by Atiora Solutions, a one-person company in the Netherlands.