Your Catch the Ghost questions, answered.

Yes, on iPhone and Android, with no card needed. The free plan includes the Pomodoro timer, ghost catching, Focus Together rooms, session tags, Ambience soundscapes and the weekly leaderboard. Every focus session earns coins for the themed ghost packs in the Store, and a streak makes each session pay more, so every pack can be earned by focusing. Pro adds Legendary Ghosts, the Sleep Timer, the Ghost Universe and Full History. There are no ads on either plan.

The free plan costs nothing and needs no card. Pro is $34.99 a year ($2.92 a month) with a 7-day free trial, or $4.99 a month, with 3 days free on iPhone. Lifetime is $99.99 once, at the founding member price, on iPhone; Android has Monthly and Annual. Coin bundles are optional one-time purchases from $0.99. The App Store and Google Play handle all billing.

Four things. Legendary Ghosts, the rarest figures in the library. The Sleep Timer: phone down all night, wake up to a chapter, and an eight-hour night pays 96 coins. The Ghost Universe, a map of how the figures connect. And Full History, which charts your focus by day, week, month and year, with a breakdown by tag. Everything else is free. Pro is $34.99 a year ($2.92 a month) with a 7-day free trial, or $4.99 a month with 3 days free on iPhone. Cancel anytime from your App Store or Google Play settings, and every ghost you caught stays yours.

Catch the Ghost Pro in the help center.

Only Deep Focus catches a chapter. Deep Focus runs 25 to 120 minutes in 5-minute steps, pays 9 coins for 25 minutes (Shallow Focus pays 6) and is built for heavy work like writing or studying. Shallow Focus runs 10 to 120 minutes for lighter tasks like the inbox, errands or quick chores; it pays coins and keeps your streak alive, with no chapter at the end.

Deep Focus, start to finish in the help center.

The apparition you were catching gets away. Its ghost stays In Progress with its chapters intact, and your coins stay put unless you staked them. Cancel in the first 10 seconds and it costs nothing. Your first three catches are practice: during those, only stopping the timer yourself loses the apparition. Stepping out of the app is different: three one-minute grace windows hold the session first.

Practice catches in the help center.

Leave the app and the clock knows. Every Deep Focus session gives you three free one-minute grace periods: switch to another app, come back within the minute, and the session carries on. Stay away longer, or leave a fourth time, and the apparition gets away. Lock your phone and the session keeps running, as long as the phone has a passcode. While you're away, the countdown stays on your lock screen: a Live Activity and the Dynamic Island on iPhone, an ongoing notification on Android. A 5-minute grace period costs 200 coins, and you can hold up to three.

Stakes and grace periods in the help center.

Stakes are optional and open up after your first 5 catches. Before a Deep Focus session, stake 25, 50, 100, 250 or 500 coins. Finish and the stake comes back with 10% on top, or 20% on the Sleep Timer. Quit and you lose the coins you staked, and only those.

Finish a focus session. A plain 25-minute Deep Focus session pays 9 coins and 3 XP. Longer sessions pay more (a two-hour session pays 4x), the session that finishes a ghost pays 10x, a streak multiplies session coins (1.25x at 7 days, 1.75x at 30, 3x at a year), and Focus Together pays 2x when two or more of you finish. Coins buy ghost packs in the Store, about 4,200 to 4,600 coins for a new pack and less as you catch its ghosts. They also buy 5-minute grace periods and streak recovery. Each friend who joins through Share & Earn and finishes a first 25-minute session adds 3,000 (up to five a week).

Coins: earning and spending in the help center.

Buy it back for 5,000 coins before the recovery countdown ends, so one bad Tuesday doesn't have to end a year of work. Miss a day and your streak drops to 0, and the app offers the buy-back with a timer; nothing is spent until you confirm. You can also hold Auto Streak Recovery, bought ahead for 5,000 coins, which restores a missed day for you. Deep Focus, Shallow Focus and Sleep all count, so a 10-minute Shallow session keeps a streak alive. Your streak follows your account across phones and time zones, so every day you earned stays earned.

How streaks work in the help center.

Yes, and it's free. Start a Focus Together room and share its code, link or QR code. A room holds up to 8 people, and everyone's timer starts on the same second. When two or more of you finish, everyone who finished earns double coins and XP. A partner who quits takes nothing from your reward, and the room shows who's still focusing. Rooms run Deep Focus, from 25 minutes to 2 hours.

Focus Together in the help center.

Open More, then Share & Earn, for your invite code, a QR code and a link. When a friend joins with it and finishes a first focus session of 25 minutes or more within 14 days, you get 3,000 coins and they get 1,000. An install alone earns nothing. Share & Earn is free on iPhone and Android.

Share & Earn in the help center.

Over 800 figures from across history, in the Ancient, Modern and Contemporary eras, from Seneca and Ada Lovelace to Frederick Douglass and Queen Elizabeth I. Each one is a life told in ordered chapters, more than 7,800 in all. Themed packs gather them in the Store: Great Strategists, Actors, Famous Japanese, Great Authors. Every ghost is curated by humans, and the library keeps getting better. Legendary ghosts come with Pro.

A chapter is one piece of a ghost's life: a quote, a story or an image. Each ghost's chapters run in order through their life. Every finished Deep Focus session catches the next one. Its picture, the apparition, paints itself in dot by dot while you work, and the chapter is yours when the timer ends. Every image shows where it came from. Catch the last chapter and the app tells you: “Their story is yours now.”

Chapters and apparitions in the help center.

Your guide is the ghost who keeps you company. You pick one of eight when you set up the app, with Frederick Douglass as the default, and their portrait appears on the timer, on the quit screen, after a lost apparition and in the reminders that nudge you back after a few quiet days. Change your guide anytime from your profile.

Choose your guide in the help center.

The Ghost Universe is a Pro map of how the figures in the library connect: who shared an era, a field or an influence. Catch one ghost and paths open to the people around them, so Ada Lovelace leads you toward Charles Babbage. It turns the library from a flat list into a web you explore.

The Ghost Universe in the help center.

Yes, with Pro. Set a wake-up time at least four hours away, leave the app open and your phone down, and wake up to a chapter. Longer nights pay more: an eight-hour night pays 96 coins before streak bonuses. You can cancel free in the first 30 minutes; after that, ending early loses the apparition, and Sleep sessions have no grace periods. Switch on the alarm for a system alarm that breaks through silent mode, and Redshift keeps the screen deep red.

The Sleep Timer in the help center.

Yes. Tap Set a Tag under the timer to pick a tag, or make one with a name and one of 15 colors. Tags are free, and you can rename or recolor them from your Profile. Full History, part of Pro, shows your focused time, sessions and ghosts completed by day, week, month and year, with a breakdown by tag, so you can see which kind of work gets your hours.

How tags work in the help center.

Yes, both free. Tap the headphones on the running timer for six Ambience soundscapes recorded by our team: Rain, Busy Cafe, Forest At Night, Thunderstorm Rain, Beach At Sunrise and Raining On The Beach. When a session ends, Take a Break on the rewards screen starts a break timer that opens at 5 minutes, and Quit Break ends it whenever you're ready.

Ambience and breaks in the help center.

Yes. Catch the Ghost is on Google Play with the same library, chapters, Focus Together rooms, coins and streaks as iPhone, on one account that syncs across both. The differences come from the platforms: the live countdown is an ongoing notification on Android and a Live Activity and the Dynamic Island on iPhone, Sign in with Apple is iPhone only (Android signs in with Google or email), and Lifetime is sold on iPhone.

Yes, when the timer is flexible. A rigid 25-minute block ignores your energy and the task in front of you. Catch the Ghost lets you switch between Deep Focus and Shallow Focus, set any length from 10 to 120 minutes and steer each session toward a subject you care about, so the timer adapts to you instead of the other way around. The reward lands the moment a Deep Focus session ends: a chapter from history, plus coins and XP.

Whatever length keeps you in the chair. Treat 25 minutes as a starting point: 25 on a low-energy day, 60 or 90 when the work has you. Deep Focus runs 25 to 120 minutes in 5-minute steps, with presets at 25, 45, 60 and 90, and Shallow Focus starts at 10.

Forest grows a tree while you stay off your phone. Catch the Ghost paints in a chapter from history (a quote, a story or an image) and pays coins and XP when you finish. You can stake coins on a session, focus in rooms of up to 8 where finishers earn double, and build a collection from 800+ ghosts. The Forest comparison page has the full table.

Not by blocking, because you can always switch a blocker off. Catch the Ghost gives your focus a reward that competes with the feed: every finished Deep Focus session catches a chapter from history, plus coins and XP. When putting the phone down earns you something you want, picking it back up starts to feel like a worse trade.

No. Every app on your phone stays open to you. Catch the Ghost pays you for putting the phone down: a chapter, coins and XP for every finished Deep Focus session. During Deep Focus it notices only when you leave its own app, and it doesn't read your Screen Time data or track your other apps. You can always put the phone down; we give you a reason to.