Symptoms
Activity Monitor or the battery menu lists FocusDragon as a top energy user. Fans spin up during long focus sessions. Battery life on the go is shorter than expected.
What's expensive
- AI Focus checks: during a block, a screenshot of your whole screen every 10 to 20 seconds, shrunk down and sent to FocusDragon's server to be judged.
- Screen capture itself is the single most expensive part, more than the network call.
- Rule-based blocks (the sites and apps you list) idle near zero.
What AI Focus already does to save energy
- It only runs during a block you started.
- It pauses while your Mac is asleep or locked, and when there's been no input for 30 seconds and nothing is keeping the display awake.
- If your screen hasn't changed since the last check, it reuses the last answer instead of asking again.
What you can do
- 1. Use AI Focus for the blocks that need it, and rule-based blocks for the rest.
- 2. Pick a block length that matches the work. You can type any length from 5 minutes to 8 hours, so the dragon isn't watching for longer than you need.
- 3. On battery, if you don't need AI Focus right now, stop the block and start a rule-based one.
AI Focus has no setting for how often it checks: the random 10 to 20 seconds is what stops anyone timing a quick switch around it. Checks only slow down once your monthly allowance of full-speed time is used up.
Still stuck? Contact support at focusdragon.app/contact with a screenshot of Activity Monitor showing FocusDragon's CPU and energy figures over a 1-hour window.