Focus – The List App, honed to perfection

I’m impressed. Focus — The List App is a streamlined, comprehensive task manager which cuts out the bullshit, replacing it with laser-focused precision. It’s that good, here’s why:

Cutting the clutter

We have busy lives. The cycle of work, pleasure and indulgence spins around us in dizzying circles of happy chaos. Keeping the dots connected means writing shit down, making shit up and keeping shit together. Some of us don’t have the capacity for cohesive organisation and it’s an app like Focus that grounds us once more.

Obviously Focus is minimal in its approach. The app opens and a Home screen appears. Three options run across the bottom of the app. A task manager, a Focus list (most important tasks) and “add task/list/note”. There’s nothing else to it. No menus to fumble around in. No graphics to spice up a watered-down user experience. Just clean, functional task management.

An app this city deserves

Adding a task is a five-second deal. Tap the plus, click on Task, select a destination folder, enter the tasks name and boom, done. In practice, this took me a few seconds.

Focus’ taskbar

The task then appears on the home screen, or whichever folder you’ve created. Want to make a folder? Tap the plus, and choose List. This creates another home for a similarly themed collection of tasks. Making a note follows the same pattern. Tap plus, tap notes and giggle wildly at the simplicity of it all.

Nothings left to chance

This is the mark of a good app, if the user can understand its functionality at a glance. With Focus open, I stare at my list of tasks and know exactly what needs to be done. The font is clear, and marking an app as complete means tapping the green box next to its description. Also, 70 app icons for Lists keeps each app looking unique.

Digging deeper into list making produces a few added extras that can be toggled for added organisational pleasures. Users can add a note to each task, a due date, get the task into the Focus list or move the task. As dry as it sounds, Focus works. It’s a remorselessly functional app.

Functionally sound

The only function I didn’t spend much time using was emailing lists to myself. My phone is always on me, so what’s the point of backing up the lists on email? I can’t import the emailed list back into Focus if the app effs up, so for me, this function is a waste.

This is the only negative in an overwhelmingly positive package. Focus is brilliant at what it does and costs US$2 to sort your life out. Download it right now by clicking on the Focus icon.