The study room

A group focus session is not a list of names ticking down. Everyone in the room stands somewhere in a drawn village, and each Yappie walks in along its own path when its owner joins.

The room lives on the Desktop app. On Mobile and Web a group session shows the same people as a plain list. Group sessions themselves are free on every plan.

Joining a session

Inside a group, the Focus sessions tab lists what is running. A session is one of two kinds:

• Timed, between 15 and 90 minutes, with a ring that fills as it goes.
• Timeless, which runs in cycles for as long as people keep going.

A session starts on its first join, and you can be in one at a time. When you join, Yappie asks what you are bringing: a free focus, or a checklist of tasks and subtasks to tick off as you work.

The room

Once you are in, the Focus tab puts away the single big pet and draws the shared room: a village of 45 pieces of scenery with twelve places to stand, at a desk, by a lantern, up on a terrace. Your Yappie walks in from the entrance along its own route, and walks back out when you leave. Only people who arrive while you are watching walk in; anyone who was there before you is already standing where they stand.

Your place is drawn fresh every time you walk in, and never the one you had last time, so your Yappie does not spend its life at the same desk. Two people in the same session may see the layout differently. It is scenery, not a seating plan.

Once you are inside, the room holds still. Nobody already standing is ever moved to make space for a newcomer, and the room is only laid out again when you truly leave: stop, pause, an owner removes you, the session ends, or the app closes. A break between two cycles is not leaving.

If more than twelve people are in the session, the extras appear as small pets in a strip under the room. You are always given a place yourself, so you never open the room and fail to find your own Yappie.

The room and the countdown ring both grow into whatever height the window has spare, so a taller window gives you a bigger room and a bigger clock.

Room mode and List mode

A small link under the room switches to the plain list of who is inside, and back. The labels are Room mode and List mode, and your choice is remembered on that device, not on your account. Either way the line above reads "Focusing in {group}".

Working from a checklist

The picks you brought sit in a panel in priority order, and the first unfinished one is what you are "working on". You can reorder them, add more tasks or subtasks while you are in there, and edit an item's minutes.

Ticking a timed item marks it done and draws its minutes from your Unsorted focus bank. If the bank is short, Yappie says so ("Not enough Unsorted focus yet for this task") and suggests either keeping going or lowering the item's time to fit, rather than quietly inventing the minutes.

Cycles and breaks

A timeless session ends each cycle with a short tally: which cycle that was, how long you have focused in this session, and the offer of a break. The break is a fifth of your focus length, with a longer one offered every fourth cycle and a slider to set it.

Taking the break disconnects you from the room, which is the honest thing to do since you are not focusing. When it is over, Yappie offers Rejoin and you walk back in.

Pausing, stopping, and things going wrong

Pausing or stopping inside a room asks first, and says what it costs: you leave the shared session, your own timer can carry on, and the focus counts as solo rather than shared with the group.

If the group or the session is deleted, if an owner removes you, or if your connection drops, your focus keeps running and your time is saved. Yappie tells you which of those happened and offers a way back where there is one. Popping Yappie out into its companion window does not drop you from the session or rearrange the room.

What the room counts

Only live presence in a room counts toward a group's totals, goals, leaderboard and charts. Focus you did alone is still yours, and still counts on your own pages. It does not count as the group's, that is all.

That is what makes a group's number worth reading, and it is why the room asks before letting you slip out of it.

Related

• Study groups covers goals, modes, commitments and ownership.
• Unsorted focus explains the bank a ticked checklist item draws from.
• Focus with a stranger is the same company without the group.