Focus Browser 1.1

Fixes the app quitting partway through a browser switch — the change was lost and the menu-bar icon disappeared.

It was never a crash. macOS asks the app to terminate ~250–300ms after the Focus Filter's perform() returns, since it's an accessory app with nothing on screen. But NSWorkspace.setDefaultApplication doesn't call back until its confirmation dialog resolves — 1–5 seconds — so obliging that request killed the switch in flight.

The intent now stays alive until the switch settles, and the app declines quit requests while one is running.

Also fixed:

• Duplicate switches coalesced. macOS calls the filter six times for a single Focus change; each of those was raising its own confirmation dialog and fighting over the activation policy.
• Guarded the LaunchServices callback, so a repeat call can't take the process down.
• Better diagnostics in ~/Library/Logs/FocusBrowser.log, which now records how the app dies if it ever does again.

Install into /Applications — macOS only indexes App Intents there, so a copy anywhere else (including ~/Applications) never shows its Focus Filter and the app does nothing.

Focus Browser 1.0.5

Maintenance release on top of 1.0.1, which moved Focus Browser onto Apple's supported Focus Filters API and dropped the Full Disk Access requirement.

Requirements (now enforced)

• macOS 26.6 or later. Focus Filters are never delivered on earlier versions, so older systems installed the app and it silently did nothing. macOS will now refuse to launch it below 26.6 instead.
• Install into /Applications. macOS only indexes App Intents there — from anywhere else, including ~/Applications, the filter never appears in Focus settings. The app warns you in its menu if it's in the wrong folder.

Changes

• Enforce the macOS 26.6 minimum at launch
• Restore the /Applications requirement to the README, which the install steps referred to
• Supply the app icon in the Focus Filter's display representation

If the filter's row in Focus settings shows a blank icon, macOS has a stale icon cache from an earlier build; clear it with sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store && sudo killall -HUP iconservicesagent Dock.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Focus Browser 1.0.1

Focus Browser now uses Apple's supported Focus Filters API instead of reading the private Focus database — so it no longer needs Full Disk Access.

Requirements

• macOS 26.6 or later. Focus Filters were broken on macOS 26.5 (the system never called into the app), and this release depends on the 26.6 fix.
• Install into /Applications. macOS only indexes App Intents for apps there — from ~/Applications the filter never appears in Focus settings and the app does nothing.

How setup works now

Each Focus picks its own browser in System Settings ▸ Focus ▸ (a Focus) ▸ Add Filter ▸ Focus Browser, rather than in the app's own menu.

Changes

• Focus detection via SetFocusFilterIntent; Full Disk Access no longer required
• Fewer confirmation dialogs: the browser is left alone when a Focus ends instead of being reverted, so you get one macOS prompt per Focus change instead of two
• Fixed the app being terminated mid-switch while the "change your default browser?" dialog was open, which could silently lose the change
• New app icon, now that the app shows up in System Settings
• Dropped the self-signed-certificate setup that only existed to preserve the Full Disk Access grant

macOS still presents its own confirmation dialog whenever the default browser actually changes; that prompt comes from the system and cannot be skipped.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Focus Browser 1.0

Automatically switch your default web browser based on the active macOS Focus mode — e.g. Chrome in Work Focus, Safari in Personal.

Install

1. Download FocusBrowser.zip below, unzip, and drag Focus Browser into your Applications folder.
2. Open it (notarized by Apple — no Gatekeeper warnings).
3. Click the 🌙 menu-bar icon → Open Full Disk Access Settings…, enable FocusBrowser, then quit & relaunch. (macOS has no public API to read the active Focus, so the app reads the system Focus files, which require this one-time grant.)
4. Pick a browser for each Focus mode, and enable Launch at login.

Requires macOS 14 or later.