What the app does
Mountoon Focus is a Pomodoro timer with company. You pick who sits with you and how long the block is, and one of six friends does their own quiet work beside you while you do yours — reading, writing, sketching, charting stars. When the time is up they look up and show you what they made with it. That is the whole app: a clock, a friend, and a break.
How a session works
Choose a length — 25 min, 50 min, or Open, which counts up instead of down — and press Start. The dial fills as the block goes by: the moon waxes at night, and by day the sun's ring comes round. You can Pause, add +5 min, or Wrap up to stop early.
Stopping early costs you nothing. Wrap up counts every minute you did, in full, and you have a few seconds to undo it if you did not mean it. Nothing in the app turns red, nothing is taken away, and there is no streak to break.
At the end you get one line — “25 minutes, side by side.” — and whatever those minutes earned. Then a break: five minutes after a 25-minute block, ten after a 50, and a longer fifteen-minute one after every fourth block. Or tap Done for now. Nothing pushes you into the next one.
An Open block has no end of its own — it counts up until you wrap it up, and stops quietly by itself after three hours without a chime.
What the friend is making
Every friend has a project of their own: Lumi reads a chapter, Ollie charts a star, Pippa finishes a sketch, Niko draws a path, Bubbles finds a note, Momo places a puzzle piece. Your first five minutes with a friend earns the first one, and after that one more for every twenty-five minutes you spend together. Every twenty-five focused minutes also lights one light for the night.
All of it is worked out from your own session history, on your phone, every time it is shown — so it can never drift away from the minutes behind it, and it only ever adds up.
Is it really free?
Yes. The app is free, there are no ads, and Lumi and Ollie are free and stay free. Every timer, every length, the Lock Screen timer, the widget, Siri and the lights are part of the free app. You can use Mountoon Focus for years without paying anything.
What does the purchase get me?
One thing: the other four friends — Momo, Niko, Pippa and Bubbles — and everything we add to Mountoon Focus later. It is a one-time purchase: it does not renew, it does not expire, and there is no subscription in Mountoon Focus. There is no currency, no shop and nothing priced on top of it. The App Store shows the current price in your own currency on the purchase sheet before you confirm anything; no price is written into the app.
I bought it and my friends are still locked
Open Settings — the gear at the top of the screen — and tap Restore purchases. Two things have to be true: the phone is signed in to the App Store with the Apple Account that made the purchase, and it is online for a moment. This is also how you get your friends back on a new phone, after an erase, or after deleting and reinstalling the app.
Someone else in my family bought it
The lifetime unlock is family shareable. The family organizer needs Purchase Sharing switched on in Settings ▸ your name ▸ Family. Then tap Restore purchases in Mountoon Focus on your own device. A newly added family member can take up to a day to see shared purchases.
It says “Waiting for approval”
Your family uses Ask to Buy. As soon as the organizer approves the request, the four friends arrive by themselves — there is no need to buy again. If the request was declined or has expired, simply choose it again.
Refunds
App Store refunds are handled by Apple, at reportaproblem.apple.com. We cannot see, change or refund a purchase, because we never see it — Apple handles the whole transaction and tells the app only whether this Apple Account holds the unlock.
The timer kept running while I was in another app
It did, and that is the design. iOS does not let any app run a timer in the background, and Mountoon Focus does not pretend otherwise: nothing counts ticks. When you press Start, the app writes down the moment the block ends, and every screen works the time out from your phone's own clock. So you can lock the phone, switch apps, or close Mountoon Focus completely — when you come back, the block is exactly where the clock says it is.
If the block ended while you were away, those minutes are credited in full and your friend is holding up what they made with them. Catching up only ever finishes the block that was running: the app never starts a block you did not sit through. It also never plays silent audio to stay awake, and it never tries to work out that you left.
My session stopped while it was paused
A pause that runs past half an hour closes the block by itself, quietly, and keeps every minute you did up to the pause. The screen tells you so once a pause has been going ten minutes. If you are stepping away for longer than that — a meeting, a call — tap Wrap up instead, which banks the minutes the same way, and start a fresh block when you come back.
The notification did not arrive
Mountoon Focus asks about notifications at your first Start, after one sentence of its own: “Only to tell you time is up. Never to call you back.” Not now starts your timer without opening Apple's box at all; the offer comes back at most once more, and then the app stops asking. If you said no — or said nothing — the timer still works perfectly; you just will not hear the end of a block while you are in another app. Things to check:
- Settings ▸ Notifications ▸ Mountoon Focus, and switch Allow Notifications on. If you refused Apple's box, this is the only way back: iOS only ever shows that box once, so the app cannot ask again.
- A Focus mode or Do Not Disturb can hold a notification back. Our end-of-block notice is marked Time Sensitive, which most Focus modes let through — but a Focus can be set to block those too. In Settings ▸ Focus, tap the one you use and allow Time Sensitive notifications, or add Mountoon Focus to the apps that are allowed through.
- The chime is a sound file inside the app, so it follows your ringer switch and your volume like any other notification sound.
- An Open block ends quietly on purpose and sends nothing — there is no notification to miss.
The only notifications Mountoon Focus ever sends are the end of a block and the end of a break, for a timer you started yourself. It will never send you a reminder, a streak warning or anything asking you to come back.
The Lock Screen timer is not showing
The countdown on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island is a Live Activity, and iOS can decline to start one. Check Settings ▸ Mountoon Focus ▸ Live Activities is on, and Settings ▸ Face ID & Passcode ▸ Live Activities (under “Allow Access When Locked”) as well. If you swiped the timer away, it stays away for that sitting — start your next block and it comes back.
Each sitting gets a fresh timer, so the friend on the Lock Screen is always the one you are actually with. Everything on it — Pause, Resume, Wrap up, and on a break Skip break and Done for now — works without unlocking the phone.
The widget is blank or out of date
The widget only ever reads what the app has saved; it never writes anything and never counts on its own. iOS decides when a widget may redraw, and it is stingy about it, so a widget can sit a little behind. Open Mountoon Focus once and it catches up. If it is still blank, remove the widget and add it again — long-press the Home Screen, tap +, find Mountoon Focus, and add A friend. If a restart of the phone is what it takes, that rebuilds the widget from scratch and is worth a try.
Does it work offline?
Completely. Every friend, every sound and every part of the screen is inside the app, and the app makes no network connections of its own — there is no Mountoon server for it to reach. Airplanes, trains, basements and libraries change nothing. The one moment a connection helps is a purchase or a restore, which is Apple's App Store, not us.
What data do you keep?
None. There are no accounts, no sign-in, no analytics, no tracking and no third-party code of any kind, and nothing you do in the app leaves your phone. Your settings, the session you are in and your session history are stored on the device and are erased when you delete the app. The whole of it is on the privacy policy.
How do I turn the changing sky off?
Open Settings — the gear at the top of the screen — and under The sky choose Always night. The app then stays in its night colors at every hour. The other choice, Follow the day, moves through dawn, day, dusk and night from the hour on your phone's own clock and nothing else: Mountoon Focus never asks where you are, and there is no location permission anywhere in it.
How do I hide the numbers?
Tap the digits. They disappear, the dial keeps filling, and tapping again brings them back. It is remembered, so a screen you prefer without a countdown stays that way.
Can I start it with Siri or a Shortcut?
Yes. Start a block, pause, resume, wrap up, start a break, skip a break and finish for the day are all App Intents, so they work with Siri, the Shortcuts app and the Action Button. They act on the same saved session the app does, so a block you started by voice is the same block on your screen.
Which devices?
iPhone with iOS 17 or later, in portrait. It installs on an iPad and runs there in iPhone compatibility mode, but no iPad layout is claimed yet, so it will look like a large iPhone.
Is this app for children?
No. Mountoon Focus is made for grown-ups and students who want quiet company while they work. Our apps for younger children are separate — Mountoon Stories is the bedtime one.
Where does the art come from?
Every friend is drawn in code: vector shapes in Swift, written with an AI coding assistant. No image generators, no stock art. Made by one person in India.
Reaching a human
Mountoon is one person, in India. Write to hello@mountoon.com and you will get a reply, usually within two days — sooner if it is about a charge. Tell us what device you are on, what iOS version, and what you saw. There is nothing to look up at our end, because the app keeps no record of you anywhere.