One of the ways Digitial Wellbeing tries to curb your phone usage is through "Focus mode," a targeted and advanced do-not-disturb-like setting that stops distractions from certain apps and stops you from easily launching them. Until now, Focus mode was a manual setting, but with the latest beta of the app, it has gained an automatic schedule and a way to ask for a break.

Head over to Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Focus mode and you should see a new Set schedule option below the on/off button. This lets you choose a start and end time, and pick days during which the mode gets turned on. The interface is very similar to another scheduled feature in Digital Wellbeing, Wind down.

During this preset period of time, Focus mode will automatically get enabled and all apps you've included in it will be greyed out in your app launcher. You'll get a pop-up when trying to open them that explains why they're disabled, with an option to head over to settings to change the limitation. You also stop getting any notifications from these apps — they'll be deferred until the mode is off.

But if you don't want to mess with your Focus mode setting and just need a temporary break, you can ask for that either inside Digital Wellbeing or from Focus mode's permanent notification. 5, 15, or 30 minutes can be granted to let you get your quick app fix before you go back to work.

Although Google calls this Focus mode, I can see it being useful the other way around. Say you don't want to get any notifications from work or social media apps in the evenings, and you also need to stop yourself from getting drawn to them: All you have to do is enable Focus mode during those hours, select the apps you want to avoid, and let it remove the temptations.

Focus mode scheduling and breaks are live as part of the latest beta of Digital Wellbeing, version 1.02752, which is available on the Play Store or via APK Mirror. The change appears to be triggered server-side though — although the version is a couple of weeks old, the options just showed up for us and our tipster.

Thanks: Tiuri