Turn on Focus mode on your Mac, and notifications go quiet — Slack pings, texts, calendar alerts, all suppressed. It feels like a productivity mode. So it's a reasonable assumption that it also keeps you off distracting websites while it's active. It doesn't. Focus mode has nothing to do with what you can open in your browser.
What Focus Mode Actually Does
Focus is a notification filter. It controls which apps and people can interrupt you with banners, sounds, and badges, and it can sync across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. That's genuinely useful for reducing interruptions from other people. But it doesn't touch outbound behavior — nothing stops you from opening Safari and typing in a URL yourself. Focus mode protects you from external interruptions, not from your own habits.
This is a common mix-up because "Focus" sounds like it should mean "distraction-free," and Apple's marketing leans into that framing. In practice it's closer to Do Not Disturb with more granular rules about who gets through.
What Actually Blocks Websites
Lock In! handles the part Focus mode skips — it blocks distracting websites and apps outright, so they're unreachable rather than just quiet.
Real Website Blocking, Not Notification Filtering
A system-level network extension blocks the domains you choose across every browser on your Mac. Typing the URL directly does nothing — the site simply won't load while a session is running.
Use Both Together
Focus mode and a real website blocker aren't competing tools — they solve different halves of the same problem. Turn on a Focus profile to quiet notifications from people, and start a session to block the sites and apps you'd otherwise open yourself. Together they cover both directions of interruption.
Session-Based, Not All-or-Nothing
Set a duration and start it from the menu bar when you sit down to work. Add Pomodoro intervals if you want structured breaks, or Strict Mode if you don't trust yourself to stop early. When the timer ends, everything unblocks automatically.
Notifications quiet is a start. Sites actually blocked is the difference. Get Lock In! on the Mac App Store