Many of the best apps for writers aim to create an environment with as few distractions as possible so that the words on the page are the focus. Like many of them, Focused eschews menus and extraneous options to give you a minimal experience while you write. Its signature feature is that it includes several audio tracks, both white noise and calming musical soundscapes, to (theoretically) boost your concentration and help you block out the world. The problem is that, while it can get the job done, Focused is way too expensive for what it offers.

Prices and Platforms

You can buy a copy of the Focused app from the Mac App Store or directly from the maker, Codebots, for $30. It's only available for Mac. There are no companion mobile apps either, which is another strike against the software.

As mentioned, the price is high for what it is. Other, better, distraction-free Mac apps for writing sell for about a third of the price. Two examples are iA Writer ($29.99 at Apple.com) and WriteRoom. They're also Mac-only. Another app available on more platforms, the similarly named FocusWriter (Windows, Linux, Mac), is free. (It does includes a "tip" option if you want to donate a few bucks to the developer.)

All the apps I've mentioned so far are fairly lightweight. There are beefier apps for writers that include more features, such as a library, templates, and dedicated areas to store reference material about your writing. Those apps cost a little more than Focused, but not much. Scrivener ($49.00 at Scrivener) and Ulysses (both Editors' Choices) each cost $45. Ulysses is Mac-only software, whereas Scrivener is available for both macOS and Windows. They both have optional iOS apps that you can buy separately for an extra $19.99 and $24.99.

While the iOS app price is high, if you think of Scrivener or Ulysses as a packaged deal at $65 or $70 that includes mobile apps for syncing your work, the price is still attractively low. Bear in mind, all the prices are one-time payments. These aren't recurring subscriptions, the way so much other software is.

One other writing app worth mentioning is Final Draft ( at Amazon) ($249.99, available for Mac and Windows). It's also a PCMag Editors' Choice, but it's specifically targeted at working screenwriters. It has tools for formatting screenplays and teleplays for professional production. It even has a template for formatting work specifically for Warner Brothers, among many other templates. There's no sense in spending nearly $250 on Final Draft if you don't have to, however, and you don't have to if you're not primarily working on scripts for movies and TV.

What Is Markdown?

Focused , and a few other distraction-free writing apps, use Markdown. Markdown is a very simple coding language used in place of formatting. Whereas in Microsoft Word, you might highlight a word and select I from the toolbar to italicize a word, in Markdown you put asterisks (*) around it, instead. Another example is that adding pound or hash symbols (#) before a line indicates that it's a title or subhead, depending on how many hashes you use.

When you create a file using Markdown and export it to another format, such as a PDF, those little bits of code translate to formatting. The benefit of using Markdown while writing is that you don't get too hung up on the appearance of the text. It's meant to help you focus instead on the words and their meaning. There aren't that many codes to learn in Markdown, maybe only two dozen or so. And some apps, including Focused, provide you with reference material so that you can look up the codes easily while you're first learning it.

Markdown isn't truly universal, unfortunately, but it's close. Minor discrepancies crop up in different apps. For example, sometimes bold requires two asterisks on either side of a word, while the same coding in a different app might get you both bold and italics. Nevertheless, the concept is simple, and the differences are minor.

Get Writing With Focused

When you first launch Focused, you get a blank text editing window and a lean menu bar. Begin typing immediately if you like, and be sure to save your file. Focused doesn't include its own storage (most writing apps don't), so you choose a place on your computer to save it, or you can use an online storage and syncing service, such as Dropbox or Box. The app does save a version history of your files, though, meaning you can review your file's progress and revert to an older copy anytime.

Focused's signature feature is that it includes eight different audio tracks you can play while working. Some of them are white noise, such as the sound of rain. Others are simple musical soundscapes on a loop, like a melody of temple bells. While the audio tracks may sound appealing, they don't justify the higher price of the app, and their inclusion is the only main difference between Focused and similar apps, such as iA Writer and WriteRoom . Download any free white noise app, and you can play whatever lyric-free sounds you want at no additional cost.

Other options to explore in Focused primarily have to do with how you view your text. Zen Mode takes you into a full-screen view, where other apps and windows can't distract you. Typewriter mode changes the screen scrolling to resemble that of a typewriter, meaning that your cursor stays in the center of the editing window while the rest of the page moves up and down instead of vice versa. I like the Paragraph Focus Mode, which dims out all the text in the window except the active paragraph. There's a similar mode for Sentence Focus. These options aren't unique to Focused, however. They are fairly standard in other writing apps.

What's Distracting? What's Missing?

Focused includes an emoji panel, which surprises the hell out of me. It seems like a very odd feature to include in an app meant to curb possible distractions. There are plenty of other features I'd prefer to emoji, if I were deciding on the few key features worth adding to a distraction-free tool.

The big one that's missing from Focused, as well as the other lightweight apps I've mentioned, is a library. A library is a file folder view inside the writing app, usually used to give larger writing projects more structure. For example, when writing a book, a writer might want to be able to see folders for all her chapters. In addition to being able to see them, you can also generally drag and drop into whatever order you want, which effectively lets you roughly organize and arrange your work. Ulysses (Free at Apple.com) and Scrivener both have libraries, and they make a world of difference. Those apps also have dedicated areas you can create within the libraries for storing other materials you might need while writing, such as an outline of your work, character sheets, and visual references. Focused doesn't have any of these features.

It does have a standard Share button, but that's a far cry from full collaboration features. On the other hand, Final Draft is the only writing app I've seen, aside from office-grade word processors such as Google Docs and Microsoft Office , that does include collaboration. In Final Draft, coauthors can work on a file together, with a chat box off to the side for communication. But even the collaborative features that Final Draft offers are light, as only one author can edit at a time.

One other minor missing piece is the ability to preview a PDF before exporting it. With Markdown you sometimes you need to check whether you've put the right coding into place or whether the final product is going to appear how you imagine, and a visual certainly helps. The ability to preview a file before exporting it is especially important with longer works comprising many files. Focused is better suited to handling a single file at a time, so that's not as much of an issue. Regardless, I'd still like to at least see a sample page before exporting the whole thing.

Focus on the Price

Focused is overpriced for what it is, considering that comparable apps sell for about $10. Even those apps, which are good for working on smaller writing projects, don't quite offer enough for organizing and arranging larger works. I recommend spending a little more to get Ulysses or Scrivener instead. Ulysses also takes a distraction-free approach, even though it has a lot of features. Scrivener is a little busier, but it's very capable. And if you're a screenwriter, you should just buy Final Draft.

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