Everything we get asked, answered.

Yes, when the timer is flexible. Traditional Pomodoro fails many ADHD brains because rigid 25-minute intervals ignore energy state and task type. Catch the Ghost lets you switch between Deep Focus and Shallow Focus, set any length from 10 to 120 minutes, and steer the reward toward a subject you actually care about, so the timer adapts to how you actually work.

Whatever length keeps you in the chair. For low-energy or admin work, stay near 25 minutes. For heavy cognitive work on a good day, push toward 60 to 90, or dial up to 120. The research on Pomodoro for ADHD supports flexible intervals over rigid 25-minute blocks, and Catch the Ghost's stepper lets you set any length from 25 to 120 minutes in 5-minute steps, with one-tap presets at 25, 45, 60, and 90, and Shallow Focus drops the floor to 10.

Forest grows a tree that dies if you leave the app. Catch the Ghost rewards you with another chapter of a historical life, plus coins and XP, every time you finish a session. No dying tree, no blame framing. If you leave mid-session the apparition escapes, but your coins stay yours unless you chose to stake them, and three one-minute grace windows hold the session open first. Our pricing is also transparent: Monthly $4.99, Annual $34.99, or a $99.99 founding-member lifetime, versus Forest’s Dec 2025 subscription pivot that broke their one-time-purchase promise. See the Forest comparison page for the full breakdown.

Yes, on both iOS and Android. The Free tier includes the Pomodoro timer, the ghost-catching loop, Focus Together group rooms, and the leaderboard. You also earn coins from every focus session that can be spent in the in-app Store on themed ghost packs. Keep your streak and you earn more coins per session, and inviting a friend pays 3,000 coins once they finish their first session, so the Store is reachable without paying. Subscribing is for convenience, not for access.

Free, $4.99 per month, $34.99 per year ($2.92 per month), or a $99.99 one-time lifetime purchase (founding-member price, launching soon). Coin packs are also available as one-time purchases for users who want to skip the grind. The App Store and Google Play handle all billing. See the pricing page for details.

Not by blocking. Blocking apps fail because you can always uninstall them. Catch the Ghost works by giving your focus a reward loop that competes with the dopamine your phone already offers. When putting the phone down earns you something you actually want, picking it back up starts to feel like a worse trade.

Deep Focus is for heavy cognitive work: writing, coding, studying, strategy. It runs 25 to 120 minutes and it is the only mode that catches apparitions. Shallow Focus is for admin and low-stakes work: inbox, errands, quick chores. It starts as low as 10 minutes and still earns coins and keeps your streak, but nothing is revealed. Choosing the right mode for the task is part of how the product works.

The session ends and the apparition you were catching escapes, so you will need to start a new session to catch it. Your coins are untouched: the app never takes coins you did not put on the table. For your first three catches it will not even take the apparition unless you deliberately stop the timer, because the rules should not be taught by making you lose something. If you want the session to carry real coin stakes, Deep Focus and the Sleep Timer each let you stake 25 to 500 coins on finishing it (unlocked after you catch 5 apparitions). Complete the session and the stake comes back with a bonus: 10% on Deep Focus, 20% on the Sleep Timer. Quit and you forfeit only the coins you staked. Before an exit counts at all, Deep Focus gives you three one-minute grace windows per session, shown as a live countdown on your lock screen. If you need longer, 200 coins buys a 5-minute window instead, and you can hold up to three of those. The point of the stake is not to punish you; it is to make finishing the session feel real, and you choose whether to take it. The language never calls you a failure.

No. Stakes, yes (the current ghost rides on finishing the session, plus any coins you chose to stake on it). Guilt and shame, no. The product is explicitly designed around the rule "the mechanic can have consequences; the language never blames the user." Exit language is neutral, there is no "you failed" modal, a partner who does not finish a group session shows up as "Done for now" rather than failed, and grace windows precede any loss on Deep Focus.

No. We do not block, lock, or restrict anything on your phone. The thesis is that reward works better than restriction. You can always put the phone down; we just give you a reason to.

Over 700 figures today across Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary eras, from Seneca and Ada Lovelace to Frederick Douglass and Queen Elizabeth I. Each one is a life told in ordered chapters, more than 7,400 chapters in total across the library. New ghosts arrive in themed packs (Great Strategists, Actors, Famous Japanese, Great Authors) every month. Legendary ghosts are Pro-exclusive.

Yes, and it is free. Focus Together runs a normal Deep Focus session in a shared room of up to eight people. One person creates the room and shares a code, a link, or a QR square; everyone who joins gets the same timer, started on the same second. If at least two of you finish, everyone who finished earns double coins and double XP on top of every other multiplier. If someone does not finish, nothing is subtracted from anyone else, and the roster shows them as "Done for now" rather than failed.

Every ghost is a life told in order, not a single picture. Chapter one is a cold open about where they came from. The chapters after it are the years that made them, told as a quote they actually said, a story from their life, or an image from their world. The final chapter is how it ended and what outlived them. You progress through them in sequence, one per completed Deep Focus session, and when you catch the last one the app closes their story: their story is yours now.

Your guide is the ghost who keeps you company. You pick one when you set up the app, and their portrait is what you see on the timer, on the confirm screen when you are about to quit, on the screen after a lost apparition, and in the reminders that nudge you back after a few quiet days. You can change your guide any time from your profile.

The count resets, and you can buy it back for 5,000 coins. That is a deliberate position: the research on habit formation is clear that a single missed day does not undo a habit, so an app that treats one bad Tuesday as the end of a year of work is misrepresenting how habits actually behave. Streaks are also computed on our servers rather than on your phone, so a reinstall, a new device, or a session that uploads late will not silently cost you the streak you earned.

The Ghost Universe is a Pro-tier feature that maps connections between historical figures, so catching one ghost can reveal hidden paths to others who shared an era, a discipline, or an influence. It turns the library from a flat list into a graph you explore.

Yes, on the Pro tier. The Sleep Timer rewards you for staying off your phone at night, paying a multiplier that scales with how long you sleep, up to 10x for a ten-hour night, and wakes you to an inspiring quote from the apparition you caught while sleeping. You can also switch on a real wake-up alarm that breaks through silent mode. It is genuinely one of the most loved features.

Yes. Catch the Ghost is on Google Play, at feature parity with iOS: the same library, the same chapters, the same Focus Together rooms, the same coin economy and streaks, and the same account synced across both. A handful of mechanisms differ because the platforms differ, for example the live session countdown appears in a notification rather than the Dynamic Island.