An attention guardian
Tell Meoz what you're working on. Free includes goal-aware AI classification with your own API key (BYOK); provider fees and limits apply separately. Pro includes managed AI.
A friendly AI focus companion that understands what you're working toward. Built for knowledge workers, professionals, and students doing deep work on Mac. Meoz notices when your attention drifts from your goal and helps you return — with gentle reminders or firmer protection you choose.
Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Set up in under a minute
This looks like a time-sink ⏳ — back to the paper?
You didn't mean to watch two hours of shorts.
It just… happened. One tab led to another, and the deep work you sat down for quietly slipped away. And it's not just the lost time — the scroll drains your focus, energy, and motivation, so even when you stop, you can't get back into it. Meoz notices the drift the moment it starts, and pulls you back before the whole day — and your drive to work — is gone.
“Maybe short-form video. It's rotting people's brains.”
— Elon Musk, asked which invention has made us worse
“Brain rot” was Oxford's Word of the Year. Doomscrolling and nomophobia have names now because they're that common. These feeds are tuned by thousands of engineers to keep you swiping — out-willing that alone was never a fair fight. Meoz is the counterweight, sitting quietly in your corner.
You were dropped into a matrix of addictive content — engineered, on purpose, by companies that want your entire day. Watch more. Buy more. Spend more. Stay trapped, forever.
That's the whole business model: hold your attention as long as humanly possible and squeeze every last minute of value out of you. Your breakfast, your lunch break, your commute, your workout, the hours meant for sleep — they'll take all of it, a few minutes at a time.
And it's everywhere now. Shopping apps, messaging apps, even your bank — all bolting on short videos and endless feeds to keep you doomscrolling with no bottom.
You were never the customer. You were the product.
Meoz is the one thing in the room that's actually on your side.
AI-powered distraction detection, configurable nudges, focus sessions and Pomodoro flow. Streaks and weekly summaries are Free; detailed focus analytics are included in Pro.
Tell Meoz what you're working on. Free includes goal-aware AI classification with your own API key (BYOK); provider fees and limits apply separately. Pro includes managed AI.
Friendly spoken nudges help you return without judgment. Choose firmer intervention, including closing distracting browser tabs, and appeal when AI misunderstands your context.
Keep daily reflections and distraction-free notes beside your work. Use encrypted vaults, iCloud Markdown notes and a daily accomplishments summary, with export for team updates.
Organize your day with Overdue, Today, and Upcoming queues (⌘T). Break tasks into subtasks, recover completed items with ⌘Z, and set any task directly as your Focus Goal.
Free includes the built-in Default network protection list. Pro adds other presets and custom host lists. Applying protection requires macOS administrator authorization.
Stay close to your goal while browsing, without installing an extension. Meoz evaluates readable pages in supported browsers and monitors selected native apps, with the required macOS permissions.
Automatic start during configured Working Hours, or on-demand Flex Sessions anytime. Pomodoro phases alternate focus with healthy breaks.
Build your focus streak and celebrate meaningful milestones with companion badges.
Native macOS notifications delivered every Monday morning summarizing engaged focus hours, verified completed phases, and active streaks.
Choose from 8 cat colours, hide the cat face, or hide the whole widget. Toggle the Goal and Meoz Sayings banners separately. Hiding your companion does not end your focus session.
Meoz Pro includes managed AI with Zero Data Retention routing for prompts and responses. No personal API key needed. Free users can use their own key (BYOK).
Choose Session Lock to protect the current session against pausing or ending early. For a longer commitment, activate Commitment Lock during a Scheduled Session to protect your routine until midnight.
Visualize verified focus hours, avoided distraction time, category breakdowns, and site-level rankings over daily, weekly, or custom date ranges.
Shape your focus with Custom Allow & Block Lists and Monitored Apps. Free includes up to 20 custom allow-list entries; Pro adds custom block lists and app-list customization. For monitored apps, Meoz nudges and offers to hide—never force-quits.
Type what you're working on today. One honest line is enough — "drafting the contract," "writing the thesis," "shipping the release."
Meoz sits quietly on your screen and in your menu bar while you do your thing. No dashboards to check, nothing to babysit.
Drift toward a distraction and Meoz speaks up — a gentle tap on the shoulder, right when you need it, gone the moment you're back.
It curls up in the corner of your screen — curious, a little playful, always on your side. It tilts its head when it's thinking, gives a small wink when things are going well, and never, ever shames you.
Meoz is your personal AI focus companion on Mac. Set a goal, work in your own apps, and let a quiet companion help you return when your attention drifts. Focus analytics stay on your Mac. Cloud AI processes relevant context through your selected provider or Meoz Pro; a compatible local provider is also an option.
Because the goal was never to punish you for being human. It's to make the good path the easy one — and to have someone in your corner while you walk it.
Meoz was built to fix all of them at once — so you stop duct-taping five apps that each solve a quarter of the problem.
Browser extensions
StayFocusd · AppBlock · LeechBlock · BlockSite
They live inside one browser. The Chrome-only ones never touch Safari, Firefox, or Tor at all — and every one of them dies the second you switch browsers, open a private window, or uninstall in two clicks. A blocklist you can toggle off isn't a guard.
Rigid desktop blockers
Cold Turkey · Freedom · SelfControl · Focus
System-wide, but blunt. They can't tell a lecture from a meme, so they wall off the docs you actually need — or you carve so many exceptions the wall turns to swiss cheese. Strict, but never smart.
Gentle timers & focus apps
Flow · OneSec · Forest · Opal · Session · Be Focused
Kind, but toothless. A pomodoro clock ticks down, a focus session sets the mood, a screen-time limit gives a polite tap on the wrist — but none of them actually stop you the moment you decide to scroll. It's willpower with a nicer interface.
Trackers & productivity scorers
RescueTime · Rize · Timing · Toggl
They watch everything and grade it — hours logged, focus scores, dashboards of where your day "leaked." But turning every minute into a metric just adds a second job: managing the tracker. That's self-surveillance that breeds guilt and stress, not focus. You don't need a report card — you need a hand on the shoulder in the moment.
Study rooms & video coworking
StudyStream · Focusmate
Working alongside others can make it easier to get started. Some days, though, being on camera feels awkward, or you just want a quieter way to focus. Meoz offers personal, goal-aware support without requiring a camera — on its own or alongside your usual study room.
Meoz brings it together in one focus system — system-level, context-aware, AI-powered classification, gentle and strict when you choose:
| Browser extensions |
Rigid blockers |
Gentle apps |
Trackers | Meoz | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works in every browser Safari, Firefox, Tor, Arc… | ✕ | ✓ | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Guards native apps too Steam, Discord, games | ✕ | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Understands context a lecture ≠ a time-sink | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | – | ✓ |
| Gentle by default nudges, not walls | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Strict when you ask a lock you can't wriggle out of | – | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Can't be dodged in two clicks | ✕ | – | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Free, forever | – | ✕ | – | ✕ | ✓ |
Every distraction — any browser, any app, any time-sink — watched by a single smart, system-level guard that actually understands what you're doing. The core stays free for everyone, for good. Premium is only for the extras. No more stitching together five half-tools that each cover a third of the problem.
One-minute setup either way. Cancel anytime — Meoz won't guilt-trip you about that, either.
$0
Goal-aware AI with your own API key (BYOK). Provider fees and quotas apply separately.
$5/month or $40/year
Early Supporter PriceEverything in Free, plus:
Start by Nov 30, 2026. Your full 45-day free trial begins when you sign up.
Checkout is through Lemon Squeezy. After purchase, activate Pro with your license key in Meoz: Settings → General → Meoz Pro.
Free and Pro use the same Meoz app. Prices in USD. Start with a 45-day free trial, then $5/month or $40/year ($3.33/mo billed annually). $40/year is an early supporter launch price. No credit card is required for the Free tier.
Meoz is a goal-aware focus companion for macOS. Tell it what you are working on; it evaluates supported browser context against that goal and helps you return when you drift. You can choose gentle reminders or stronger intervention. Website blocklists and goal-aware AI serve different needs, and Meoz offers both.
Yes. Free includes goal-aware AI classification with your own API key (BYOK). You choose and configure a supported provider; its fees, quotas and model quality apply separately. Pro adds managed AI without a personal API key, plus premium features. AI classification is not exclusive to Pro. BYOK setup guide →
You choose the strictness profile: Gentle Companion, Smart Context or Deep Lockdown. Depending on your configuration and the content, intervention can progress from reminders to closing distracting browser tabs. These profiles are available with Free/BYOK too. Pro adds Session Lock and Commitment Lock to restrict changing or ending focus. Native app reminders do not force-quit your apps. Explore intervention options →
Yes. The Cat Widget menu lets you hide the widget or just the Meoz face, and toggle the Goal banner and Meoz Sayings separately. Hiding the companion does not end your focus session. Sound controls are also configurable, so you can keep the experience quiet.
Custom Focus Rules lets you manage website lists and monitored apps. Free includes goal-aware AI with your own key (BYOK), up to 20 custom Allowed During Focus entries for trusted work sites, and the Network Blocker's Default protection. Pro lets you customize Blocked During Focus to keep chosen sites off-limits during focus, and Monitored Apps During Focus to choose native apps that prompt a nudge and an offer to hide when frontmost—not force-quit. Pro also adds custom network lists. Applied network protection is separate and can remain active outside focus sessions; applying network changes requires macOS administrator authorization.
Meoz currently requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Support for older macOS versions is not currently available.
Meoz does not capture screenshots for browser judging. Your analytics stay on your Mac. AI classification uses relevant goal and browser context: with a cloud BYOK provider, requests go directly to that provider; with Pro, they go through Meoz's gateway and its AI processing providers. A compatible local provider is another option. Cloud AI processing is not entirely on-device. Pro routes prompts and responses only to AI endpoints with a Zero Data Retention policy, which can permit transient in-memory caching. This does not mean all app or account data is unrecorded. Free/BYOK follows your chosen provider's policies. Read the Privacy Policy for details.
During an eligible focus phase you can pause within the available allowance, take a Pomodoro break, or end the session. A lock you deliberately enable can restrict pause, ending a session or quitting. Check the current session menu for the actions available to you.
If formulas copied from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek or another AI assistant appear as raw text in Obsidian, VS Code’s Markdown preview or HackMD, the math delimiters may not match what your editor expects. Meoz’s free AI Math Formatter converts \(…\) → $…$ for inline math and \[…\] → $…$ for display math. Click “Convert clipboard & copy” to read your clipboard, convert the text and copy the result back in one action; your browser may ask for clipboard permission. You can also paste and review text or convert multiple text files. Your text and files are processed locally in your browser, without uploading their contents or sending them to an AI service. No account or Meoz installation is needed. Your editor must support math rendering; this tool changes delimiters, not the equations themselves. Try AI Math Formatter free →
Start your first Meoz focus session on Mac, then tailor goals, schedules, breaks, Custom Focus Rules and the cat widget to the way you work.
Read article → ComparisonsWant a friendly companion beside your work? Explore Meoz's gentle, goal-aware approach alongside Rize's emphasis on time tracking and productivity insights.
Read article → GuidesWhat BYOK includes in Meoz Free, how to get started, and how provider costs and privacy differ from Pro.
Read article → GuidesLooking for the best focus app for studying and research on Mac? Meet Meoz: a friendly AI companion for thesis writing, Overleaf, coding and educational YouTube.
Read article →Download Meoz, tell it what matters today, and get back to work. It'll take it from there.
Download for MacmacOS 14 or later · Free to try