What each app is for
Focus Bear is a focus app built around blocking. Its core promise is to keep distractions away across all your devices, desktop and mobile, and to guide you through habits and breaks around your work: a morning routine designed to set up focus, real-time habit prompts, and breaks that keep deep work sustainable. Its App Store name, "Built for AuDHDers", and its listing make clear who it is for.
Orbit is a routine runner. It blocks nothing. It holds a routine as a list of steps and walks you through them one at a time, with the current step on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, and it forgives missed days with earned streak freezes.
They overlap in one place — both guide routines — but they start from different problems. Focus Bear assumes the enemy is the distraction you open. Orbit assumes the enemy is the gap between steps, and the start.
Side by side
| Focus Bear | Orbit | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Focus Bear Pty Ltd | Aron de Groot (Groot Apps), Netherlands |
| Apple devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch | iPhone only |
| Desktop | Yes, central to the product | None |
| Minimum iOS | 16 | 26 |
| Blocks apps and sites | Yes | No |
| Guides a routine | Yes, focus-oriented morning routines and breaks | Yes, any routine, step by step |
| Lock Screen and Dynamic Island | Not described in the listing | Yes, the routine runs as a Live Activity |
| Missed days | Not described in the listing | Streak freezes rescue a streak when you return |
| Account required | Yes | No |
| US ratings (10 Sep 2026) | 4.5 from 13 | New — released 30 Aug 2026 |
Platform facts are from each app's App Store listing, checked on 10 September 2026.
The short verdict
For running a routine, pick Orbit. It walks you through the sequence one step at a time, keeps the current step on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, offers a streak freeze to rescue a streak after missed days, and needs no account.
Focus Bear is stronger at things Orbit does not do: distraction blocking, including on your computer, cross-device coverage and built-in break reminders.
This page is written by the maker of Orbit; both lists below are specific so you can check them.
Where Orbit is genuinely better
Any routine, not only focus routines. Showers, getting out of the door, evening wind-downs, cleaning — Orbit runs whatever sequence you build, and the routine library has ready step lists for many of them.
It follows you away from the screen. The current step sits on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island with a countdown, which matters for routines that happen away from a desk.
Missed days are forgiven. A freeze earned every five days in a row can rescue a streak when you come back. Nothing has to happen on the bad day.
No account, data on the device. Orbit needs no sign-up.
Where Focus Bear is genuinely better
It blocks distractions, including on your computer. For desk work, this is the whole game. Orbit cannot stop you opening a browser tab. If the thing that eats your day is YouTube at 10:15, Focus Bear addresses it and Orbit does not.
It works across devices. Desktop and mobile, with the same rules. Orbit is iPhone-only.
Breaks are built in. Focus Bear actively prompts breaks during deep work, which suits people prone to hyperfocus who forget to stop.
Who should pick which
- Distraction on your computer is the main problem: Focus Bear.
- You want blocking and routines from one app: Focus Bear.
- Your hardest moments are away from the desk — mornings, evenings, chores: Orbit.
- You want the calmest, simplest routine runner on iPhone: Orbit.
Combining Orbit with blocking
If you like Orbit's routines but also need blocking, you do not need a second routine app. iPhone's built-in Focus modes and Screen Time can silence and limit apps during a routine, and a work startup routine can include "turn on Work Focus" as its first step. On a computer, any blocker will do the rest.