Support

Focus Firewall might stop working on your Mac for various reasons. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot the issue:

• How to tell if the app is working?
• Check browser support
• Upgrade your Mac
• Restart your Mac
• Review permissions
• Reset onboarding
• Force reactivation

If you are still experiencing issues, please feel free to contact us via email at support@focusfirewall.com.

During onboarding, you are asked to grant permissions to our network extension. On macOS 15, Apple moved the "allow" to a different place. Here's how to find it:

1. Open System Settings
2. Go to General > Login Items & Extensions
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom and find Network Extensions
4. Click on ⓘ to the right of Network Extensions and Toggle Focus Firewall on

It should look like this:

On macOS 14 or older, the "allow" button is in a different place:

1. Open System Settings
2. Go to Security & Privacy > Privacy
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom and find Focus Firewall
4. Click on Allow

Find out which macOS your Mac is using

Focus Firewall uses a network extension in order to filter distracting websites and you need to grant permissions in your Mac for it to work properly.

Granting permissions

This is typically done during onboarding when you activate Focus Firewall for the first time.

If you skipped onboarding by accident, check out Reset onboarding.

Once you activate Focus Firewall during onboarding, your Mac should show a permission popup:

Click on Open System Settings.

If you're on macOS Sonoma or older, in the Security & Privacy page, scroll to the bottom and find Focus Firewall. Click on "Allow" as shown below:

If you're on macOS Sequoia or newer, you should toggle the switch on as shown below:

Once that's done, your Mac presents you with yet another popup to grant the network extension permission to filter network content.

Grant permission to filter network content

Focus Firewall needs this permission in order to identify which websites are being accessed and block them in case they are distractions. Click "Allow" to continue.

Sometimes your Mac may need to be restarted to complete the installation process. In other cases, there may be macOS bugs that are outside of our control that might go away after restarting.

Go to Settings > Advanced > Reset and select Reset onboarding, open Focus Firewall from the menu bar and do the onboarding from scratch again.

In the Network Setup step, make sure to follow the instructions and grant permissions when asked by the system.

In rare scenarios, the network extension installation gets to a stuck state and stops working. If you tried everything else, this is the last resort and should be able to fix any issues.

1. Open Focus Firewall settings from the menu bar
2. Click on the Advanced tab and open the diagnostic tool
3. In the tool, scroll down and click on Manage > Force extension deactivation, which forces the extension to be uninstalled.
4. Restart your computer.
5. Open the troubleshooting tool again, and now click on Manage > Force extension activation, to install the network extension from scratch again. You may be asked for permissions again, which you need to grant both in the Privacy & Security and on the pop-up.