Support
Help and contact
How to reach us, and plain answers to what people ask.
By email
Contact
Write to support@stayfocusedsoftware.com. We reply within 3 working days. The reply may come from a different address, because mail to this one is forwarded to our own mailbox.
- Published by
- Matthew Greengrass
- About a purchase, write from the address you paid with, or tell us that address.
- About the extension, say what happened and which version you have (see the About page of the options).
We use what you send only to answer you. The privacy policy says how long we keep it.
License keys
Putting in a license key
- Open the options. Click the Stay Focused icon in Chrome’s toolbar, then the Settings (gear) button. If the icon isn’t in the toolbar, it is in Chrome’s Extensions (puzzle piece) menu.
- Choose Stay Focused Plus, the last item in the menu. In a narrow window the menu is a row across the top: scroll it sideways to the end, or make the window wider.
- Paste the key under “Have a license key?” and choose Activate.
You can paste the key with whatever is around it: Stay Focused picks it out.
- A lost key
- It’s in the email we sent you when you bought. If that is gone, write to us from the address you paid with and we will send it again.
- Another browser
- One key works in up to 5 browsers. To move it, choose Remove from this browser on the old one first: a copy you only uninstalled still counts. If the old one is gone, write to us and we will free it.
Requirements
What you need
- Browser
- Google Chrome 120 or later
- Device
- A computer
- Language
- English
- Account
- None
- For sync
- Plus, and Chrome signed in with Chrome Sync on
- Install
- From the Chrome Web Store
Questions
Questions and answers
The product
Is it really free?
Yes. Everything Stay Focused does today stays free, with no limits. Plus only adds extras.
Can it stop me from switching it off?
A lock holds your settings for up to 72 hours and can’t be ended early, even with your password. Chrome can still remove any extension: see what it can’t do.
What is a speed bump?
An optional pause before you loosen your blocking: breathe for 15 seconds, or type a phrase.
What happens when a daily limit runs out?
The site is blocked until your day ends, which is midnight unless you set a later time. Until then the block page still offers 5 more minutes at a time, behind your speed bump. You can turn that off, and it isn’t offered while settings are locked.
I forgot my password. Can you reset it?
No, and nobody can: only a salted hash of it is kept, in your browser. Removing and reinstalling Stay Focused is the only reset, and that erases your settings.
Privacy
Can Stay Focused see what I browse?
It never reads what’s on a page and keeps no full browsing history. For limits and insights it keeps, on your device, the hostnames you were turned away from and the time spent on each site, and deletes daily records after 120 days. You can turn the counting of time off in Settings.
When does it go online, and what does it send?
The free version makes no network requests at all. With Plus, it checks your license key with our license server when you activate it and about once a week after that. A check sends the key and a random ID for the browser, and nothing about your browsing, settings or statistics. It travels through Cloudflare, as this website does, and our license server does not record your IP address.
Sync, a Plus extra, is off until you switch it on. Your settings then travel through Chrome Sync in your Google account. The privacy policy has every detail.
Why does it ask for access to all sites?
Chrome only lets an extension redirect requests to sites it has access to, and any site might be on your list. Stay Focused declares no content scripts. The one thing it ever runs inside a page is a redirect to the block page, when a page that had already loaded becomes blocked.
Can I export or delete my data?
Options → Settings → Backup & restore saves your settings, statistics and saved links as a file. Settings can also reset your statistics, or everything.
Removing the extension makes Chrome delete everything it stored on this device. If you turned on sync, a copy of your settings is also in your Google account: turn sync off first, and tick the box that deletes the synced copy.
Plus
What does Plus add, and what does it cost?
Scenes, accent colours, soundscapes, sync, advanced insights and your own quotes, and nothing that blocks. The pricing page has the prices and a line-by-line comparison.
Is there a free trial?
Yes: 7 days, once per install, started from Options → Stay Focused Plus in the extension. It needs no card and no account, and nothing is charged when it ends.
Who do I pay?
Plus is sold by Matthew Greengrass through Stripe, the merchant of record, which handles payment, tax and receipts under the name Onelink. Google is not the seller. On a card statement the charge starts with Onelink.com* or LINK.COM*.
Can I cancel, or get a refund?
Cancel any time in your Onelink account, which the Manage purchase button in the extension also opens. Removing the extension does not cancel a plan.
For a refund, write to us within 14 days of buying, or of a yearly renewal. The refund policy says how to ask.
Does Plus need an internet connection?
Only to check the key. Lifetime keys keep working if our license server can’t be reached. Yearly keys are renewed by a check after each payment. If that check can’t be made, Plus keeps working for up to 14 days after the last successful one, then pauses until a check succeeds.
What happens if Plus ends?
The extras pause and Stay Focused goes back to its defaults. Blocking is never weakened and nothing is deleted.
Limitations
What it can’t do
Stay Focused makes a distraction harder to reach, but it can’t make one impossible.
- It can’t stop you removing it. You can have
chrome://extensionsshow the block page while your settings are locked, but the Extensions menu in the toolbar can still remove it. Other Chrome profiles, Guest mode, other browsers and other devices aren’t covered. - Incognito needs your permission. Blocked sites open normally there until you turn on Allow in Incognito, under Details on
chrome://extensions. Time in Incognito is never counted, so daily limits don’t run down there. A site already over its limit stays blocked. - Only web pages, only on a computer. It blocks
httpandhttpsaddresses in Chrome, notfile://pages, other extensions or apps outside the browser. Chrome on Android and iOS doesn’t run extensions. - It trusts your computer’s clock. Setting the clock back never makes a lock or a session longer. Setting it forward ends them early.
- Some pages flash before they are blocked. Route changes inside single-page apps, keywords inside non-Latin domain names, and very large rule sets (more than about 950 page or keyword rules) are caught just after the page starts loading.
- Time is counted approximately. Only the active tab in the focused window counts, and counting stops after 60 seconds without input unless the tab is playing audio.
- Sync covers settings only. Statistics, saved links, passwords and locks stay in each browser. Chrome gives synced settings about 90 KB, so very long lists (roughly 3,500 entries or more) can be too large.