12 Best Deep Work Apps for Starters (I’ve Tested Them All)

Deep work, as Cal Newport defines it, is “professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit.”

It’s the opposite of what most of us do all day.

The ability to focus deeply is becoming both increasingly valuable and increasingly rare.

That’s not a coincidence.

You can’t just decide to do deep work. That’s like deciding to fall asleep immediately or not be nervous during a presentation. Your brain doesn’t respond well to these commands.

I’ve tried. You’ve probably tried too.

You sit down, ready to focus intensely on that important project, and within minutes you’re checking email or remembering you need to order dog food.

Deep work requires the right conditions.

A distraction-free environment. The right mental state. Proper time management. But creating these conditions is surprisingly difficult in a world engineered to fracture your attention.

This is where apps come in. They create boundaries your willpower alone cannot maintain.

The right app can block distractions before they reach you, track your progress to provide motivation, structure your time to maximize focus periods or create the optimal sound environment for concentration.

I’ve identified 12 apps that stand out for people just starting their deep work practice.

Let’s dive in.

The Best Deep Work Apps For Starters At A Glance

1. Sunsama

Sunsama is a digital daily planner that forces intentionality into your workflow.

Sunsama creates a unified daily view.

It pulls tasks from Trello, Asana, Notion, and others. Emails from Gmail. Meetings from your calendar.

Everything that demands attention, all in one place.

But the key insight of Sunsama isn’t just aggregation. It’s a constraint. It asks you to decide how long you want to work on each task and when your workday should end.

I’ve noticed that beginners in deep work often fail for two reasons:

1. They don’t protect their attention from digital fragmentation
2. They set unrealistic expectations about how much they can accomplish

Sunsama addresses both. It gives you a unified view of your commitments, then forces you to be realistic about what fits in a day.

You need to know about Sunsama’s timeboxing feature.

You schedule tasks to specific time blocks on your calendar. This creates the conditions for deep work by pre-committing your future self to focused sessions.

For people struggling with focus, Sunsama includes a Focus Mode that eliminates everything except the current task.

This creates the distraction-free environment I mentioned earlier in the introduction.

Sunsama Features

• Guided daily planning that walks you through organizing your day step by step
• Unified dashboard pulling tasks from Trello, Asana, Notion, and other tools
• Email integration to turn messages into scheduled tasks
• Slack and Teams integration for converting messages to follow-up items
• Calendar sync with Google, Outlook, and iCloud with bidirectional updates
• Realistic workload planning with time estimates and workday boundaries
• Focus Mode eliminates everything except your current task
• Weekly Review feature for intentional planning and reflection
• Analytics to track and understand your time usage patterns

Sunsama Pricing

Sunsama offers a 14-day free trial with full access to all features.

After that, you have two options. Pay $16 per month with annual billing, or $20 monthly.

2. Notion

Notion is a workspace that combines notes, tasks, wikis, and databases in a single, customizable tool.

It’s the digital equivalent of having an infinitely large desk where you can arrange anything exactly how you want.

This flexibility is both Notion’s greatest strength and its biggest challenge for deep-work beginners.

When Newport talks about deep work requiring the right conditions, he’s referring to both the external environment and mental scaffolding.

Notion excels at the latter.

One of the best ways Notion helps with deep work is by reducing the cognitive switching cost between different tools.

When your notes, tasks, and reference materials live in one place, you preserve mental energy for the actual work.

Second, it allows you to create dedicated deep workspaces. You can build a dashboard specifically designed to focus your attention on the current deep work session.

Third, it enables clear separation between planning mode and execution mode, a distinction Newport emphasizes repeatedly in his book.

For beginners, I recommend starting with a simple deep work template rather than building from scratch. The structure helps you focus on practice rather than configuration.

The most effective deep work setup in Notion has three components:

1. A project database to track what needs deep work
2. A session planner to schedule uninterrupted blocks
3. A distraction log to record thoughts that arise during focus time

Notion’s biggest advantage over Sunsama is its flexibility. While Sunsama excels at daily planning, Notion can integrate your deep work practice with a broader knowledge management system.

Notion Features

• Customizable dashboards for focused work environments
• Database templates for tracking deep work sessions
• Toggle blocks to hide distracting information
• Calendar views for scheduling focus sessions
• Connection to reference materials within the same workspace
• AI assistant for quickly capturing ideas during breaks

Notion Pricing

Notion offers a generous free plan for individuals, with unlimited pages and blocks.

Team plans start at $12 per member per month with annual billing or $10 monthly.

For more advanced features, the Business plan is $15 per member monthly with annual billing.

3. RescueTime

RescueTime is automatic time-tracking software that runs in the background on your devices, recording exactly how you spend your digital time.

The biggest obstacle to deep work is a lack of awareness.

You think you spent an hour writing that report, but actually you spent 26 minutes writing, 14 checking email, 12 on Slack, and 8 scrolling Twitter.

I’ve experienced this disconnect countless times. The gap between how I think I spend my time and how I actually spend it is embarrassing.

RescueTime eliminates this self-deception.

The core insight of deep work is that focused attention is both valuable and rare. RescueTime quantifies just how rare it actually is in your daily life.

The most powerful feature for deep work beginners is Focus Sessions.

This combines time tracking with distraction blocking. You set a timer, and RescueTime blocks the websites and apps that typically fracture your attention.

This leads to a virtuous cycle:

1. You see where your time goes
2. You block your common distractions
3. You complete more deep work
4. You track the improvement

Colleen Doran, an NYT bestselling cartoonist, said this about RescueTime:

“I started using RescueTime, and I was absolutely shocked by what I saw. I started making changes immediately and experienced big improvements within weeks.”

This shock is common. We all underestimate our distraction levels.

RescueTime’s detailed reports reveal not just where your time goes, but when you do your best work.

This insight is gold.

Deep work is not just about blocking distractions, it’s also about scheduling focus during your peak cognitive hours.

RescueTime Features

• Automatic time tracking across all your devices
• Focus Sessions that block distracting websites and apps
• Detailed reports and analytics on your time usage
• Goal tracking for productivity targets
• Custom alerts when you hit time thresholds
• Weekly email reports summarizing your productivity
• Project and client time tracking for billing
• Mobile app that blocks distractions on your phone

RescueTime Pricing

RescueTime offers a 14-day free trial.

After that, the Lite plan is free but limited to basic time tracking.

The Premium plan costs $12 monthly or $78 annually ($6.50/month).

Team plans start at $6 per member monthly with annual billing.

4. Brain.fm

Brain.fm is functional music engineered to influence your brainwave patterns to enhance focus, relaxation, or sleep.

Brain.fm starts with the brain, not the music.

It uses rhythmic pulses embedded in instrumental tracks to guide your brainwaves toward specific patterns associated with focus. Neuroscientists call this “neural entrainment.”

The claim sounds like pseudoscience.

But their research is surprisingly solid. They’ve published peer-reviewed studies, conducted fMRI and EEG testing, and received funding from the National Science Foundation.

The right audio environment can create a protective bubble around your consciousness.

Brain.fm constructs this bubble more effectively than regular music or basic white noise.

Three things make Brain.fm particularly helpful for deep work beginners:

1. It provides immediate structure. You press play, and within minutes, your brain begins shifting to a focus state.
2. It creates consistency. The same neural patterns activate each time, training your brain to associate these sounds with concentrated work.
3. It eliminates decision fatigue. You don’t waste time building playlists or hunting for the perfect focus track.

Brain.fm organizes music into activity-specific categories. For deep work, you want their “Focus” sessions, particularly those labeled “Deep Work.”

What surprised me was finding that different people need different levels of stimulation. Some brains need subtle guidance to focus, while others require stronger signals.

Brain.fm addresses this with “neural effect” settings. Higher settings provide more pronounced rhythmic patterns, beneficial for people with ADHD or significant focus challenges.

A software developer described his experience:

“I finally tried Brain.fm. One and a half hours later, 4,299 words. I haven’t felt this focused before.”

Brain.fm Features

• Science-backed functional music specifically designed to enhance focus
• Multiple neural effect levels to match your brain’s stimulation needs
• Task-specific music modes (Deep Work, Light Work, Learning, Creativity)
• Genre variety including lo-fi, electronic, acoustic, piano, and nature sounds
• Session timers that integrate with the Pomodoro technique
• Offline access for working anywhere without internet

Brain.fm Pricing

Brain.fm offers a free trial (7 days for monthly plans, 14 days for annual).

After that, you can choose between:

• $9.99 per month
• $69.99 per year ($5.83/month, saving 40%)

Both plans provide unlimited sessions, offline access, and access to all categories.

5. Forest

Forest is a focus app that kills your virtual trees when you get distracted.

That’s it. That’s the whole concept. And it works surprisingly well.

The mechanics are simple: you plant a virtual tree when you want to focus.

If you stay in the app for your chosen duration (25 minutes, an hour, whatever), your tree grows. If you leave the app to check Instagram, your tree dies.

Dead trees stay in your forest forever, a permanent reminder of your moment of weakness.

What makes Forest special isn’t technological sophistication but psychological insight. It leverages a phenomenon psychologists call “loss aversion” — we hate losing things more than we enjoy gaining them.

When I first tried Forest, I was like, “how could a cartoon tree possibly keep me from checking Twitter?”

But after killing my first sapling, I felt genuinely disappointed in myself. That tiny emotional response was enough to change my behavior.

Forest excels in three areas that matter for deep-work newcomers:

1. It creates immediate consequences for distraction
2. It makes focus visible and tangible
3. It builds a visual record of your progress over time

The gamification extends beyond just growing trees.

You earn coins for successful sessions, which unlock new tree species and sounds.

You can even spend these coins to plant real trees through Forest’s partnership with Trees for the Future. They’ve planted over 1.7 million actual trees this way.

It also includes detailed statistics tracking. You can tag different types of work, view daily and monthly trends, and even track your focused time in Apple Health.

Forest Features

• Gamified focus timer with tree-growing metaphor
• Deep Focus Mode that blocks non-allowed apps
• Tag system for categorizing different work types
• Detailed statistics across days, weeks, and months
• Social features to plant with friends
• Real-world tree planting program
• White noise/focus sounds

Forest Pricing

Forest costs $3.99 as a one-time purchase on iOS, with optional in-app purchases for cosmetic items.

The Android version has a free tier with basic functionality, with premium features available for $1.99.

This makes Forest one of the most affordable deep work tools on our list — a small price for a significant productivity boost.

6. Freedom

Freedom is a distraction blocker that works across all your devices simultaneously.

Cal Newport himself emphasizes that deep work isn’t just about concentration, it’s about the absence of distraction.

Freedom creates this absence forcefully.

I’ve noticed that most people underestimate how much tiny distractions fragment their attention. You check a notification “just for a second” and suddenly you’ve lost 20 minutes and all your mental momentum.

Freedom solves this by making distraction impossible rather than just difficult.

What sets Freedom apart from similar blockers (like Forest) is its synchronization feature. When you start a session, it blocks distractions across all your devices simultaneously.

This fixes a common beginner mistake: blocking Twitter on your laptop only to find yourself checking it on your phone five minutes later.

The multi-device approach eliminates the “path of least resistance” problem. When all escape routes are closed, your brain stops looking for them and refocuses on the task.

Freedom offers three blocking approaches:

1. Blocking specific websites and apps
2. Creating “allowed only” lists where everything is blocked except what you specify
3. Nuclear option: blocking the entire internet

For deep-work beginners, start with option 1. As you advance, graduate to the more restrictive options.

The most powerful feature for developing a deep work habit is scheduled sessions. You can set Freedom to automatically block distractions during your designated deep work hours.

For particularly difficult focus days, Freedom offers “Locked Mode” which prevents you from disabling a session once started.

Freedom Features

• Cross-platform blocking (Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome)
• Website and app blocking
• Block-all-except mode
• Scheduled and recurring sessions
• Locked mode for extra accountability
• Focus sounds and ambient noise
• Session history and analytics

Freedom Pricing

Freedom offers a 7-day free trial with full access to all premium features. After that, you can choose between:

• $8.99 per month
• $39.99 per year ($3.33/month, saving 63%)
• $99.50 lifetime purchase

7. Cold Turkey

Cold Turkey Blocker is distraction-blocking software with a nuclear option: once you set a block, it’s almost impossible to evade.

I’ve tried many blockers, and they all share the same fatal flaw. They assume you’ll remain as committed to productivity in the future as you are in the present moment.

This is rarely true.

Cold Turkey understands a fundamental truth about distraction: your present self sets rules that your future self desperately wants to break.

While Freedom (which we discussed earlier) blocks distractions across devices, Cold Turkey adds a layer of permanence.

When you lock a Cold Turkey block, you’re stuck with your decision.

Cold Turkey offers several creative locking mechanisms:

1. Timer locks that can’t be disabled until a specified time
2. Random text generation that requires you to type out meaningless characters
3. Restart locks forcing a computer reboot to disable
4. Password protection (in the Pro version)

The most powerful feature for deep work beginners is the ability to block entire categories of distraction at once.

Cold Turkey has three particularly useful features for deep work:

First, the statistics dashboard reveals how much time you waste on distractions. Like RescueTime, this creates awareness, but Cold Turkey adds immediate action options.

Second, the block page shows motivational quotes when you attempt to access blocked sites. This tiny push is often enough to redirect your attention.

Third, the “Frozen Turkey” feature lets you block your entire computer for designated periods. This forces physical separation from digital distractions; the purest form of deep work.

Cold Turkey Features

• Website blocking with support for domains, specific URLs, and wildcards
• Block entire categories of websites at once
• “Block everything except” mode for allowing only specific sites
• Frozen Turkey feature to lock your entire computer
• Multiple lock types (timer, random text, restart required, password)
• Scheduled blocks with weekly repetition (Pro)
• Pomodoro timers and break allowances (Pro)
• Usage statistics and tracking

Cold Turkey Pricing

Cold Turkey offers a free version that includes basic website-blocking capabilities.

For more serious deep work practitioners, the Pro version costs $29 CAD (about $21.50 USD) as a one-time purchase with lifetime updates.

They also provide a 30-day money-back guarantee if you find it’s not working for your workflow.

8. Clockwise

Clockwise understands which meetings are flexible and which aren’t, then automatically rearranges them to create long stretches of focus time.

What makes Clockwise different from the time blockers we’ve discussed is its intelligence.

The core feature for deep work practitioners is Focus Time holds.

Unlike manual time blocking in Sunsama or Notion, these holds are dynamic. When your schedule changes, Clockwise automatically adjusts to preserve your deep work periods.

For beginners struggling with setting boundaries, the Auto-decline feature is useful.

It automatically rejects meeting invites that would interrupt your protected focus blocks. This removes the social friction of saying no.

Jonathan, a Clockwise user, described the impact:

“Implementing Clockwise has been incredibly helpful for blocking large amounts of Focus Time for teammates to do their head down, deep work without interruption from meeting invites.”

Three things make Clockwise particularly powerful:

First, its optimization engine. It analyzes millions of possible calendar arrangements to find the one that maximizes everyone’s focus time. This is something no human scheduler could ever accomplish.

Second, its understanding of flexible vs. inflexible meetings. You mark which meetings can be moved, and Clockwise does the work of finding better times.

Third, its team features. Clockwise can establish team-wide practices like No-meeting days that create a shared deep work culture.

Clockwise Features

• Focus Time holds that automatically create and protect blocks for deep work
• An auto-decline feature that rejects meeting invites during protected focus time
• Flexible meetings that can be automatically rescheduled to optimize your day
• No-meeting days for team-wide deep work
• Smart meeting breaks that ensure you have time between meetings
• Slack integration that syncs your meeting status and silences notifications during focus time
• Team analytics to track focus time across the organization
• AI-powered chat interface for scheduling and calendar management

Clockwise Pricing

Clockwise offers a free plan that covers the basics: calendar management, task scheduling, and scheduling links for external meetings.

The Teams plan costs $6.75 per member monthly with annual billing.

This is where the deep work features kick in. You get Focus Time optimization and auto-scheduled Focus Time holds.

Business users pay $11.50 per member monthly, which adds organization-wide analytics and admin controls. This makes sense when you’re trying to build a deep work culture across an entire company.

9. Rize

Rize is an AI-powered time tracker that improves focus and builds better work habits by analyzing your actual behavior.

I remember when I first saw my own focus metrics. I was shocked. What I thought were productive three-hour stretches turned out to be a bunch of nothing.

Unlike RescueTime, Rize doesn’t just show you where your time went. It actively intervenes to improve your habits.

Rize’s AI break notifications enable that.

Most people either never take breaks (leading to burnout) or take too many (destroying flow). Rize analyzes your work patterns and suggests breaks at optimal moments.

Rize’s focus detection is another cool feature.

Rize measures not just time spent but concentration quality. It tracks how much you context-switch and which apps fragment your attention most.

Ali Abdaal, a productivity YouTuber and author, puts it this way:

“Rize has been essential for me to optimize my deep work time when I sit down to work on my book.”

The most powerful feature for beginners is the AI Focus Time Detection. This shows you a score reflecting how deeply you’re working.

Rize also includes a distraction blocker that displays warnings when you drift to distracting sites. This is less severe than Cold Turkey’s nuclear option but often enough to make you pause and reconsider.

For those who liked Brain.fm, Rize offers built-in focus music specifically designed to enhance concentration.

Rize Features

• Automatic time tracking without manual timers
• AI-powered break notifications based on your actual work patterns
• Focus detection that measures concentration quality
• Distraction blocker with gentle warnings
• Focus music for enhanced concentration
• Daily and weekly email reports
• Google and Outlook Calendar integration

Rize Pricing

Rize has a free plan that retains only one day of data but includes basic functionality.

The Standard plan costs $9.99 per month with annual billing ($16.99 monthly) and includes all tracking data, customizable categories, and AI insights.

The Professional plan at $23.99 per month with annual billing ($39.99 monthly) adds project and client tracking for freelancers and professionals.

10. Toggl Track

Toggl Track is like a fitness tracker for your attention.

Instead of just running in the background, Toggl’s one-click timer makes you consciously decide what you’re working on before you start.

This simple action creates what psychologists call an “implementation intention” — the act of deciding in advance exactly when and how you’ll do something. Research shows this dramatically increases follow-through.

In my experience, the most powerful feature for deep work beginners is the Timeline view.

This creates a visual representation of your day, showing exactly where your attention went. The gaps and patterns become impossible to ignore.

Toggl’s detailed analytics reveal your peak productivity periods. This is crucial for scheduling deep work during your natural high-energy times.

Next, we have the project time estimates.

These create the bounded constraints that deep work thrives within. When you know you have exactly 3 hours to complete a task, your mind focuses more intensely.

Finally, the 100+ integrations. Toggl connects with nearly everything you already use, minimizing the friction of adoption.

If you’ve tried Forest but need something more robust, or if RescueTime’s passive tracking wasn’t actionable enough, Toggl provides the middle ground.

Toggl Track Features

• One-click timers that start tracking with minimal friction
• Calendar view that integrates with Google and Outlook calendars
• Timeline feature that shows your day visualized
• Offline tracking when you’re away from an internet connection
• Automated tracking that can run in the background
• 100+ integrations with tools like Asana, Jira, and Salesforce
• Customizable reports with sharing capabilities
• Team collaboration features for shared accountability

Toggl Track Pricing

Toggl offers a Free plan that works for up to 5 members with unlimited time tracking and basic reporting. For most individual deep-work practitioners, this is enough to get started.

If you need more, the Starter plan runs $10 per member monthly (with annual billing) and adds critical features like billable rates and project time estimates.

Teams serious about deep work should consider the Premium plan at $20 per member monthly, which adds timesheet approvals and advanced tracking integrity features.

11. Noisli

Noisli is a sound environment customization platform that helps you create the perfect audio backdrop for deep work.

I’ve found that most people underestimate how much their environment affects their ability to focus. Your brain constantly processes ambient sounds whether you’re conscious of it or not.

The fundamental insight behind Noisli is that not all background noise is created equal. Some sounds mask distractions while others become distractions themselves.

Unlike Brain.fm, which uses engineered functional music, Noisli gives you control over your soundscape.

You mix and match 28 high-quality ambient sounds, everything from rainfall to coffee shop chatter to brown noise.

Everyone’s brain responds differently to various sounds.

What helps me focus might distract you completely. Noisli lets you experiment until you find what works for your unique neurological makeup.

Like Toggl and Forest, Noisli encourages working in focused intervals. But Noisli integrates this directly with your sound environment, gently fading out audio when your session ends.

It also comes with a distraction-free text editor. This built-in tool creates a minimal writing environment accompanied by your customized soundscape.

This sound-based conditioning is powerful. Your brain begins to associate your specific sound combination with focus, creating an instant mental trigger for deep work.

Noisli Features

• 28 high-quality ambient sounds for customized mixing
• Premade playlists for different activities (focus, study, writing)
• Ability to save up to 10 favorite sound combinations
• Session timer with automatic sound fadeout
• Distraction-free text editor with markdown support
• Oscillation feature that gradually shifts sound volumes
• Shuffle mode that rotates through different sound combinations

Noisli Pricing

Noisli keeps its pricing simple.

The free plan lets you test the waters with 16 sounds and 1.5 hours of daily streaming.

If you’re serious about focus, the Pro plan at $12/month ($10/month if billed yearly) gives you everything: all 28 sounds, unlimited streaming, and 10 saved combinations.

Teams can opt for the $28/month ($24/month if billed yearly) Business plan that covers two users with team management features.

12. one sec

one sec is a delay-based distraction blocker that makes you wait before opening apps you’re trying to reduce usage of.

When you try to open Instagram or Twitter, one sec interrupts with a 10-second breathing exercise. This interruption is just long enough to break the automatic habit loop.

The science is solid.

A peer-reviewed study with the Max Planck Institute found one sec reduced social media usage by 57%.

I find this fascinating because it reveals something fundamental about our distractions. Nearly half of our social media usage is completely unconscious.

We don’t decide to check Instagram; our thumbs just do it automatically.

one sec works through two mechanisms:

First, it brings awareness to unconscious behaviors. The interruption forces you to notice what you’re doing.

Second, it removes the “instant” from instant gratification. By delaying the dopamine hit, it breaks the neurological reward that powers the habit.

You can think of one sec as the opposite of Freedom or Cold Turkey.

Instead of removing the choice entirely, it simply delays it slightly. This small delay is enough to engage your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain capable of making better decisions.

one sec Features

• App and website blocking for nearly any application or site
• Intention setting (forces you to specify your purpose before opening apps)
• Intention reminders (notifications after 1-5 minutes to check if you’re on track)
• Healthy alternatives suggestions (recommends better activities)
• Progress tracking with detailed analytics
• Scheduled blocks (set specific hours or days for zero distractions)

one sec Pricing

one sec offers a free tier that lets you block one app or website.

For unlimited blocking, you’ll need the Pro version at $19.99 yearly or $2.99 monthly, with lifetime access available for $99.99.

Family plans cover up to six members for $29.99 yearly or $149 lifetime.

Your Focus Journey Starts Here

Deep work is becoming a necessary survival skill in an increasingly distracted world.

The 12 apps we’ve explored solve different parts of the deep work equation:

• Environment creators like Freedom, Cold Turkey, and one sec eliminate distractions before they reach you.
• Time managers like Sunsama, Clockwise, and Toggl create the structure deep work requires.
• Focus enhancers like Brain.fm, Forest, and Noisli optimize your mental state.
• Insight providers like RescueTime and Rize show where your attention actually goes.

Which app should you start with?

It depends on your particular challenge:

If you’re constantly interrupted by notifications and social media, start with Freedom or one sec.

If you struggle with unrealistic planning, try Sunsama or Clockwise.

If you can’t maintain focus even in a distraction-free environment, Brain.fm or Noisli might be your answer.

And if you’re not even sure where your time goes, RescueTime or Rize will show you.

But remember that tools are just enablers. The real work is developing the habit of depth.

Start small.

Perhaps 30 minutes of focused work each day and build from there.