• 2 min read
Flipper Busy Bar Is Pricey but Helps You Focus
Flipper’s Busy Bar is easy to ignore in an office, but its built-in Pomodoro timer made it a surprisingly effective focus tool.
Image: Wired
At $250, Flipper’s Busy Bar looks like an office status signal, but in practice it works better as a personal focus gadget than as a way to keep coworkers away.
In WIRED’s open office, the device was mostly ignored. One coworker joked about whether the reviewer was too busy to talk, then carried on chatting anyway. Even when switched to ON AIR mode and pointed outward from a studio window, the small, bright screen was not especially noticeable across a large office. WIRED notes that people often ignore the studio’s much larger ON AIR sign too.
Where the Busy Bar seems more effective is on the desk, especially in clock mode and as a built-in countdown tool. Its timer defaults to the Pomodoro technique, breaking work into 20-minute sessions with five-minute breaks. As time runs down, a small Dr. Mario-like pill around the BUSY icon gradually fills, giving the user a simple visual reward for staying on task.
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Flipper says more features are on the way, including a broader app library and better ways to modify the device’s open-source operating system. That may determine whether the Busy Bar becomes more than a niche desk accessory, depending on what users actually build for it.
For now, WIRED’s verdict is mixed: the Busy Bar is an overengineered focus tool that will appeal to a narrow audience, especially since it syncs with the Busy app, which is already available for free. Still, the reviewer says it was the only thing that helped them focus enough to finish the story on time—or almost on time.
Computing Editor
Tomas lives in the terminal. He covers chips, laptops, and operating systems with a focus on performance and efficiency. He reads kernel changelogs the way other people read fiction, and he's always on the hunt for the perfect mechanical keyboard switch. If it processes data, Tomas has an opinion on it.
via Wired
