macOS MENU BAR APP

Deep work is crimson. Shallow work is blue.

RedBlocks lives next to your Wi-Fi icon and plans the day as an hour-by-hour timeline of work blocks — then defends the crimson ones. No account, no cloud, no browser tab.

Download for macOS FREE · macOS 14+ · APPLE SILICON & INTEL
01

Plan the day

Click and drag on the timeline to rough out the day — blocks snap to 15 minutes and never overlap; a dragged block jumps over its neighbors and lands in free space. Crimson for the work that needs your whole brain, blue for the rest. The S–S toggles make a block repeat weekly. Not ready to give something a time? Plan a block — a title and a color, no slot. It waits in a slim Planned tray under the header, and one click drops it into the next free slot as a draft. Pin a block you repeat and it stays in the backlog, ready to schedule again.

New block · draft 45 m
SNAPS TO :00 · :15 · :30 · :45
SMTWTFS
S–S TOGGLES · REPEATS WEEKLY · STAMPED ↻ EACH MATCHING DAY
Outline chapter 4
Expense report
NO TIME YET · CLICK → NEXT FREE SLOT · PINNED ROWS STAY
02

Dive

Five minutes out, a card under the menu bar reminds you of the upcoming Deep Work. Then a sonar ping marks the start, brown noise settles in underneath (generated in-app — no audio files), and the block locks until it ends, inking itself in solid as the minutes pass. If a notification banner lands mid-dive, RedBlocks answers it with how much dive time is left. No notification permissions asked — ever.

Deep Work in 5 mShip the parser · 10:15 – 11:45
Stay focused42 m of dive time left
Ship the parser 42 m left
LOCKED FOR THE DIVE · INKING IN SOLID AS THE MINUTES PASS
03

Surface

A chime marks the end — glass on the way up — and the block confirms the moment it does: a ✓ appears and it joins the day’s permanent record — it can’t be edited or cleared away.

Write chapter 3 1 h 30 m

The icon is the answer.

One glance at the menu bar: what should I be doing right now?

DEEP WORK · NOW
SHALLOW WORK · NOW
NOTHING SCHEDULED
IF BLOCKS EVER OVERLAP IN SPIRIT — DEEP WORK WINS.

The quiet details.

CHIMES

Sonar on the way down, glass on the way up. Back-to-back blocks play only the dive tone. One toggle to mute.

BROWN NOISE

Soft and procedural, running for exactly the length of the dive. Pick the sound, set the volume live, or turn it off.

FOCUS NUDGES

Banners during deep work are answered with a quiet “Stay focused” card. It watches for the banner window itself — no permissions.

5-MINUTE WARNING

“Deep Work in 5 m,” with the block’s title and slot — time to wrap up and get ready. Moving a block re-arms it.

REPEAT ↻

Day toggles stamp a block onto the week, each copy marked ↻. Edits change the series going forward; series can’t collide.

YOUR DATA STAYS HOME

Nothing sent to our servers related to your data/blocks.

FREE · NO ACCOUNT · NO CLOUD

Dive in.

Download RedBlocks for macOS REDBLOCKS.APP · macOS 14+ · APPLE SILICON & INTEL

One .app, straight from this page. Drag it to Applications, add it to Login Items, done.