In today’s world where the most precious currency is our attention, avoiding distractions requires a fair bit of discipline and force of will.
Even though the whole process of avoiding distractions while working is a complex topic with an infinite number of variables, sometimes listening to background nature sounds or other types of ambient noises can really help.
Focusli is one such utility, a tiny yet potentially impactful GNOME Shell extension that allows you to play various ambient sounds directly from Linux’s status/menu bar.
Relaxation and focus, just one click away
As one can imagine, working with Focusli feels very much like a walk in the park. Once installed, just click the menu bar icon and select one of the six sounds. Each sound has its dedicated volume slider, allowing you to fine-tune your listening experience to a high degree.
Just like most utilities of this sort, Focusli also allows you to add multiple layers of sound. This means that you can combine as many sounds as you want in order to create your own custom background noise/sound.
A limited number of default sounds, but there’s a catch
While we’re on the subject of sounds, these are the default sounds of Focusli: Rain, Wind, Summer Night, Coffee Shop, Whitenoise, and Camp Fire.
We agree that it’s not much to work with, however, thankfully, you can add new custom sounds by simply editing the “~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/focusli@armonge.info/sounds/database.json” file.
Conclusion
Obviously, a tiny little GNOME Shell extension like Focusli will not fix all your focus/distraction problems. However, if you find repetitive and “neutral” background noises to be of help, then Focusli is a great start and you should definitely give it a shot.
