The Busy Bar is a tool that makes people leave you alone

Focus and productivity apps Many, all to help you avoid the many distractions coming from your phone. Or the annoying people in your open office. Digital wellbeing tools can silence notifications, limit apps like TikTok and Instagram, and help you focus on the task at hand. But you can also turn it off very easily once you feel like you haven’t scrolled endlessly enough.

This is where Flipper is at Busy bar The hardware clock comes with an LED display that acts as a clock and a custom timer. Press the big button in the middle, and the screen will display a bright red Busy sign or another message that lets people around you know you’re busy. (Maybe try “GO AWAY” or “GET OUT OF MY ROOM, MOM.”) The bar goes on sale today and costs $249.

“How do you politely, but firmly, let people know that you don’t want to be bothered?” says Callum Tennent, Creative Writer at Flipper. “We decided the most polite way to do this would be to put a huge red light on your desk.”

Courtesy of Fin Devices

Fin devices make Flipper Zeroa $200 portable hacking tool that became big on TikTok in 2022 for using a Tamagotchi-style dolphin character to detect radio frequencies and potentially break RFID-controlled locks. It was a device that raised a variety of security concerns. Canada proposed a Blocking the device Fearing that this would enable car theft. In 2023, US Customs and Border Protection 15,000 seized Flipper Zero devices, and then eventually released it. Flipper is currently working on another model, which is… Flipper Onewhich has more advanced capabilities.

Among those more controversial devices comes the busy bar. The tape also works with separate The application is busyIt is one of the productivity and focus tools on your phone. What he doesn’t have is the ability to hack anything. “We make it here at Flipper, but there’s no real connection to it,” Tennent says. “They are completely separate products.”

Essentially, the Busy Bar is an expensive “on-air” light. It offers many of the same productivity capabilities that are likely already built into your phone’s operating system — like blocking notifications on your phone. But Flipper makes it clear – just like that Brick, hardware tool You tap to block access to certain apps – having a device option to turn off the distractions around you is vastly different than just trying to use it Software productivity tools On your device.