How Kairo works
Short answers, exact methods. If a number in the app looks wrong, this page explains how it was made.
Focus sessions
Start a session from the centre button. Pick a task or name it, choose a length (25, 50, 90 min or ±5 steps) and optionally 2–4 cycles with breaks.
- Exact time. Kairo stores the real start and end of every focused stretch. It never counts ticks, so it stays exact if the app is closed, the phone sleeps or restarts.
- Distractions. Pausing counts as one. Leaving Kairo for more than 10 seconds during a session counts as one. Kairo doesn't look at which app you opened.
- Ending. Sessions end on their own at the planned time. Tap End twice to stop early; anything over a minute is saved.
- Minimise. Back or Minimise keeps the session running. The centre button shows the time left.
Plan: tasks and notes
Tasks have a project, an optional estimate and a due date. Focus on a task and its logged time shows as logged/estimate. Notes autosave; notes written after a session stay linked to it. Search covers titles, text and #tags.
Daily check-in
Mood (5 levels), energy (1–10), last night's sleep and your habits. One per day; editing replaces it. Turn the 21:00 reminder on or off in You.
Insights: exact methods
Everything is computed on your phone from your own data. A pattern only appears once it has enough data, and always says how many data points it rests on.
| Stat | How it's calculated | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Streak | Consecutive days with at least 25 minutes of focus. Sessions crossing midnight are split between days. Today doesn't break it until it's over. | — |
| Focus half-life | Time until the first distraction in each session. Sessions with no distraction count as "still focused at the end" (censored), not as failures. The half-life is the Kaplan–Meier median. | 5 sessions |
| Peak window | Focused minutes from the last 28 days placed into the hour they happened; the best two consecutive hours win. | 5 sessions in 28 days |
| Clean sessions | Share of sessions (≥ 1 min) with zero distractions. | 3 sessions |
| Switch cost | Median gap before the next session when the project changes, minus the median gap when it doesn't. Same day, gaps ≤ 3 h. | 3 of each |
| Estimate drift | Total logged time on finished tasks ÷ total of their estimates − 1. | 3 finished tasks |
| Sleep × focus | Average focus on days after ≥ 7 h sleep vs after less. A pattern, not proof of cause. | 5 days in each group |
| Momentum | Average daily focus over the last 7 days ÷ the 28 days before. 1.00 = same pace. | 7 active days |
Share cards
After a session or from Insights: Session (with today's timeline), Sticker (transparent, to place on your own photo) and Week. Images are 1080 × 1920. Task names are hidden by default.
Vault: backup, export, restore
- Backup password. Set it once (8+ characters). Backups are encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived from it (PBKDF2-SHA256, 210,000 rounds). Nobody can recover it, including us.
- Auto-backup. Pick a folder (Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, SD card…) and Daily or Weekly. The backup runs when you open Kairo and one is due.
- Share a backup file. Creates a
.kairofile and opens the share sheet. - Export open formats. Notes as Markdown files; sessions, tasks and check-ins as CSV.
- Restore. Replaces everything on the phone with the backup. If anything fails, nothing changes.
Android support
| Version | Notes |
|---|---|
| 6.0 and older | Not supported. |
| 7.0 – 12L | Fully supported. Notifications are on by default. |
| 13 | Kairo asks for notification permission. Themed icon supported. |
| 14 – 16 | Predictive back, edge-to-edge. |
On some Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus phones, battery saving can delay the end-of-session notification by a few minutes. The session itself still ends exactly on time. To avoid the delay: Settings → Apps → Kairo → Battery → No restrictions.