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PR Focus is a macOS app designed to make it easy for you to stay on top of PRs that are important to your work.
If you work in multiple repositories, and want a single place to keep track of PR progress, PR Focus may be a good tool for you.
Find out more about how it works, how to get started, or how to get help.
Get an overview of pull requests across repositories you watch, or dive deep into the details of a specific repository or pull request.
PR Focus gives you a snapshot of PRs in flight so you don’t miss any important work that needs your attention. Impress your colleagues by always knowing about the latest status of oustanding work, and eliminate the time-wasting of having to click around multiple repositories to check on work that matters to you.
PR Focus is a macOS app that lets you keep track of important pull requests across repositories. You specify repositories you want to watch, and PR Focus pulls down open pull requests in those repositories. New pull requests go into your Inbox, where you can decide whether you want to watch or ignore them.
Separate sections of the dashboard let you keep track of pull requests where:
You can see a view that rolls up all your PRs across your watched repositories, or drill into a specific repository for more fine-grained information.
PR Focus includes logic to automatically remove archived or inactive PRs from your views, letting you focus only on the PRs that matter to you.
PR Focus is a tool for watching PRs across repositories.
What is it good for? PR Focus was written by a technical writer who needs to keep track of engineering pull requests across multiple upstream repositories, and colleagues’ pull requests across multiple documentation repositories. You might find it useful if you are a contributor to or maintainer of more than one repository.
What is it not good for? PR Focus is about watching repositories, not making contributions to them. You cannot make PRs or reply to PRs from PR Focus, although the app contains many links to relevant destinations on GitHub to enable you to easily engage directly via GitHub.
What is it not yet good for? PR Focus is currently in an early private beta on TestFlight. The current development focus is on stability, UI and UX fixes to get to a public beta TestFlight, and eventually a release. Future roadmap will be driven by any early adopters.
PR Focus is currently available as a private alpha through TestFlight.
If you have been invited to the private TestFlight group, you should get an email from Apple. Follow the instructions in the email to accept the invite and begin testing PR Focus.
The first time you start PR Focus, you’ll be asked to provide some setup details. You must:
PR Focus requires a GitHub access token with permissions to access the repositories you want to watch.
For details about how to generate a GitHub access token, refer to the GitHub Authentication documentation page Manage Personal Access Tokens.
GitHub provides two types of access tokens:
The required permissions for PR Focus to fetch pull request data vary depending on which type of access token you create.
For more details about the required permissions for each type of access token, refer to GitHub API Key
You can update your access token later from the PR Focus menu with the Manage API Key option.
After you provide a valid API access token, PR Focus guides you to add your first repository. Provide the GitHub URL for a repository you want to watch, similar to https://github.com/dacharyc/prfocus-website
When you are adding your first repository, you can optionally configure settings for that repository. For more information, refer to Customize Repository Settings below. If you just want to get started, you can skip this step.
After you add the initial repository, PR Focus automatically fetches open pull requests for that repository. You’ll go to the main dashboard, and should start seeing PRs appear in your Inbox, My PRs, and Assigned PRs or Reviewing PRs respectively. You can specify whether to Watch or Ignore the PRs that come in. For more information, refer to Incoming PRs.
You can optionally configure repository-specific settings for this repository. These settings include:
You can always update these settings later in Repo Settings. For more information about customizing repository setings, refer to Repository Settings.
You can update your global default settings later in Global Settings. For more information, refer to Global Settings.
After you add your first repository, you may want to add more repositories for PR Focus to watch. For more information about adding repositories, refer to Add a Repository.
You may also want to change the label color or provide a custom name for a repository. For more information about customizing the way the repository appears in PR Focus, refer to Repository Settings.
You may want to customize your global default settings. If you do not customize the settings for a repository, PR Focus uses the global default settings to determine:
For more information about global default settings, refer to Settings.
Repositories are the bucket by which PR Focus groups pull requests.
As a user of PR Focus, you can add one or more repositories that you want to watch. When you Fetch PRs, PR Focus makes API calls to GitHub to get open PRs for all of the repositories you’re watching, as well as updating existing PRs that PR Focus has previously ingested.
You can view pull requests in a specific repository, or view an All Repositories dashboard that aggregates all the PRs across all the repositories you’re watching.
You can customize the way PR Focus displays repository details, including:
You can also customize how often PR Focus fetches updates for the repository, or how long PR Focus waits before setting a pull request to “Inactive” or “Archived.”
You can delete a repository from PR Focus, which also deletes all pull requests for the repository.
You can add a repository to PR Focus using the Add Repositories option in the Repositories menu.
This opens a window where you can add one or many repositories.
By default, when you open the Add Repositories window, you see the option to add a single repository.
Enter a GitHub URL for the repository you want to add, similar to https://github.com/dacharyc/prfocus-website.
You can also select a color for the repository pill to help visually distinguish the repository in a list.
Press the Add Repository button to add the repo to the list of repositories you’re watching.
The repository appears in the sidebar. PR Focus enqueues a job to automatically fetch the open pull requests in the repository from GitHub. Once any running jobs are complete, PR Focus gets the open PRs for the new repository.
If you view Manage Repositories option in the Repositories menu, you’ll see the repository in your list of watched repositories. From here, you can click a link to view the repository in GitHub.
If you want to quickly onboard a team to PR Focus, you can create a list of repository URLs to add to the app.
When you open the Add Repositories window, you’ll see the option to Add many.
When you select this option, you can enter a list of repository URLs separated by newlines. PR Focus parses this list and adds all of the repositories to the app.
When adding many repositories, you cannot customize the color of the labels. PR Focus starts at the top of the color list and assigns a different color to each repository in the list. If you enter more repositories than colors, PR Focus starts assigning label colors again at the beginning of the list.
You can manually customize these labels later if you configure repository settings.
When you select a repository in the sidebar, this opens the Repository Dashboard. From here, you can:
Or if you want to view a rollup of all the PRs you’re watching in one view, you can select the All Repositories view, which displays all the pull requests from the individual repository dashboards in an aggregate view.
The Repository Dashboard breaks down into different lists of pull requests. By default, you see:
Optionally, if your workflow involves assigning PRs, you can check the setting in the Settings or in the repository’s Update Settings to Show Assigned PRs. This adds a fifth list of PRs that are assigned to you.
A summary view gives you information about each PR in the repository, including:
You can click into a PR summary to see the full details of the pull request.
The background color of the PR summary changes when the PR has new updates since you last viewed the details. PR Focus uses your macOS settings for Light or Dark mode.
In Light mode, a PR summary with a bright white background has updates you haven’t seen. One that is gray does not have any new updates since you last viewed it.
In Dark mode, a PR summary with a gray background has updates you haven’t seen. One that is dark black does not have any new updaets since you last viewed it.
You can right-click on a PR summary to open a context menu. This menu lets you quickly perform common actions without clicking into the pull request details.
The available options change depending on the context in which you open the menu. For example, if a PR is closed or merged, one of the options in the context menu is “Archive PR.” If the pull request is open, this option is not available.
You can always select “Open in GitHub” to immediately interact with the PR on GitHub. Or you can click into the pull request details to view the details without leaving PR Focus.
A PR’s “Conflicts” icon can indicate one of three states:
X: A PR has merge conflicts.A PR’s “Status” can be one of four states:
A PR’s “Checks” include jobs that run on a PR before merging, such as linters, test suites, or other CI jobs. The status of these jobs is indicated as one of three states in the PR summary:
X: A PR has at least one check, and it has failed at least one check.When you click into a PR’s details, you can see the status of individual checks.
When a new PR is opened in a repository you’re watching, PR Focus checks for a few things:
If none of those things applies, the pull request appears in the Inbox. From here, you can view the PR’s details and decide whether to Watch or Ignore a PR. If you later become a reviewer or an assigned contributor, the PR moves to one of those columns whether or not you Watch or Ignore it.
For more information about processing incoming PRs, refer to Incoming PRs.
It is possible for a PR to be opened and never appear in PR Focus. In PR Focus v0.2.x, the app only pulls down new PRs if they are open. If a new PR is opened and closed again in between the times PR Focus fetches the pull requests from the repository - for example, while you are on vacation - PR Focus does not ever see the PR.
A future update for PR Focus will fetch PRs that are opened and then closed again between fetches.
When you choose to Watch an incoming PR, it moves into the Watched PRs list for the repository and in the All Repositories rollup view.
You can stop watching a PR at any time by either:
If the PR is still open, it goes back to your Inbox. If the PR is no longer open, it disappears from all dashboards.
You can also choose to Ignore a pull request that you’re currently watching. If you select this option, PR Focus stops watching the PR and moves it to the Ignored PRs dashboard.
Choosing to Watch or Ignore a PR does not move a pull request out of the My PRs, Assigned PRs or Reviewing PRs columns.
When the GitHub user who created the PR is the same as the GitHub user in the PR Focus Global Settings, the app considers you the PR author and automatically moves the PR into My PRs. PR Focus does not provide a way to manually designate a PR as “mine.”
Choosing to Watch or Ignore a PR does not move the pull request out of the My PRs column. The only way to move a pull request you’ve made is waiting for it to become inactive and move to the Inactive PRs dashboard, or waiting for it to close and move to the Archived PRs dashboard.
When the GitHub user in the PR Focus Global Settings is the same as a GitHub user in the requestedReviewers array in the GitHub Pull Request API, PR Focus moves the PR into the Reviewing PRs list.
When you review a PR, GitHub automatically adds you to the requestedReviewers array. Someone else, such as the PR author, can also add you as a requestedReviewer by requesting a review from you.
If you do not use this workflow, you can hide the Reviewing PRs list from your dashboards by un-checking the Show Reviewing PRs checkbox in the Global Settings or Repository Settings.
Reviewing PRs is enabled by default.
Note: PR Focus does not have support for requestedTeams because it does not have information about teams. If your organization uses requested teams, PR Focus will not add the PR to your Reviewing PRs list until you actually review the PR. If this is a feature that is important to you, please file a feature request or leave a comment or an emoji reaction if this feature request already exists.
When the GitHub user in the PR Focus Global Settings is the same as a GitHub user in the assignee field or the assignees array in the GitHub Pull Request API, PR Focus moves the PR into the Assigned PRs list.
If you do not use this workflow, you can hide the Assigned PRs list from your dashboards by un-checking the Show Assigned PRs checkbox in the Global Settings or Repository Settings.
Assigned PRs is disabled by default.
You can sort pull request lists in the repository dashboard by a number of options. By default, all lists in the repository dashboards are sorted by updated date. Recently updated PRs always appear at the top of the lists.
You can change the sort order of Watched PRs, Assigned PRs, Reviewing PRs, or My PRs with one of these sort options:
You can individually change the sort order for each column. PR Focus does not preserve the sort order you select and always defaults to showing PRs in descending order by updated date.
Pull requests may move automatically between lists and dashboards depending on things like whether you are a reviewer or assignee, or whether the PR has been inactive or closed for a period of time. You can manually change the status of PRs by watching or ignoring them, or by archiving a PR that is closed or merged.
When you Watch or Ignore a PR in your Inbox, the PR moves to the Watched PRs list or the Ignored PRs dashboard.
You can manually change the status of a watched or ignored PR at any point by either:
You can also right click on the PR Summary of a closed or merged PR and select the Archive PR option to immediately move it to the Archived PRs dashboard.
PRs may also move between lists automatically in the Repository Dashboard and Inactive/Archived dashboards when:
You can customize these settings on a per-repository basis, or by changing the Global Settings from their default values. For more information, refer to:
At any time, you can click into a PR Summary in a list or dashboard to view the PR details. When you are viewing the PR details, you can press the buttons to Watch or Ignore a PR. For more information, refer to View PR Details.
While PR Focus is open, it automatically fetches and updates PRs in the repositories. You can configure the interval at which PR Focus fetches and updates PRs in two ways:
The default interval for fetching and updating PRs is every hour.
If you configure repositories to fetch different intervals, you may see some repos not included in a “fetch PRs” job run in the logs. For example, you may have a few repositories fetching updates several times per hour, but the rest on an hourly cadence. When each of these jobs run, you’ll only see the repositories with that fetches interval appear in the logs for that job.
Optionally, you can manually press the Fetch PRs button at the upper right hand of the PR Focus window. This lets you get updates from GitHub for all of the repositories you watch any time when there isn’t already a job running.
When a job is running, an animation appears in the PR Focus toolbar and replaces the Fetch PRs button. The button returns when the job is complete.
When you press the Fetch PRs button, this kicks off a few jobs:
assignee or requestedReviewer, PR Focus moves the PR to the appropriate list in your dashboard.To update the settings for repositories you’re watching, or to delete repositories from PR Focus, select the Manage Repositories option in the Repositories menu.
When you select this option, you open the Manage Repositories window. This window provides:
When you press the Update Settings option, you open the repository settings window for that repository.
Above the divider, you see Repository Details. These pieces of metadata are derived from the URL you provide when you Add a Repository.
The GitHub URL contains the owner and repository name, which PR Focus extracts to the relevant pieces of metadata. If you ever forget what a repository is, or need a quick way to get to the repository, you can click the Repository URL to go to the repository in a web browser.
The repository name from this URL is displayed as the Repo Name in the PR Focus sidebar, and on the repository label in the PR Summary.
You can customize these repository details:
In the example below, the realm-kotlin repository name has been replaced by the custom Realm Kotlin name, and a specific color has been chosen for the repository label.
You can customize the repository appearance independent of customizing repository settings. Pressing the Update Apperance button only changes the repository’s custom name and label color; it does not affect the repository settings below the divider.
In this view, you can also customize the settings for a repository. Settings you customize here override the Global Default settings for these options. The settings you can customize include:
When you press the Save Repo Settings button, PR Focus saves all of the values in the “Customize Repository Settings” section of the view as custom repository settings. These settings apply only to this repository, and override the global default settings for this repo.
If you would instead like to customize the global default settings, refer to Settings
The GitHub API rate-limits API access tokens to 5,000 calls per hour.
PR Focus makes a call to fetch the list of open PRs in a repository, and then makes indvidiual calls to get the details of each pull request it needs to update.
If you are watching many repositories, or if the repositories you watch have many open PRs, the fetch job can be quite lengthy and can consume hundreds of API calls per run. For this reason, we recommend not fetching PR updates too often. The default fetch interval is hourly. The most frequent fetch interval that PR Focus provides for its automated jobs is “several times per hour.” You can manually fetch updates at any time by pressing the Fetch PRs button, but if the rate limit has been exceeded, you won’t see any updates to your pull requests in PR Focus.
Note: Currently, PR Focus has minimal handling for exceeding the rate limit. If you don’t see updates to PRs you expect, check the PR Focus Logs to see if there are any error messages related to exceeding the rate limit. You may want to stagger the fetch interval across repositories if you encounter issues with the GitHub rate limit.
You can delete a repository from PR Focus the Manage Repositories option in the Repositories menu.
This opens the Manage Repositories window.
Find the row for the repository you want to delete, and press the Delete repo button. This deletes the repository and all of its pull requests from PR Focus.
New PRs that are opened in repositories you watch become Incoming PRs in PR Focus.
PRs where you are an assignee, a reviewer, or the PR author automatically move into relevant columns in the Repository Dashboard.
You can manually move PRs by watching and ignoring them.
After time intervals you can configure, PRs automatically become inactive or archived.
You can view all the PR details for repositories you care about in one place, or get links to review relevant information about a PR in GitHub.
When you start PR Focus, when you add a repository, or at intervals you can configure while the app is open, PR Focus retrieves a list of open pull requests for the repositories you watch. You can also manually fetch PRs at any time.
If a PR already exists in PR Focus matching the PR number, PR Focus retrieves the most up-to-date version of the PR from GitHub and updates the details in PR Focus. If an open PR does not match a PR number that PR Focus already knows about, it creates a new PR.
If you are an assignee, a reviewer, or if the PR was made by you, the incoming PR goes directly into one of those columns, bypassing your Inbox. For more details about how PR Focus determines these states, refer to View a Repository.
When the PR was made by somebody other than you, and you’re not an assignee or a reviewer, the PR goes to your Inbox. You’ll see a PR Summary giving you information about the PR, and you can click into it to view more details.
The list of PR Summaries in your Inbox let you quickly scan a list of new PRs and decide whether they require action from you or you can safely ignore them. You can view PRs in your Inbox on a per-repository basis, or see a list of all incoming PRs in the All Repositories view.
You can watch or ignore a PR in one of two ways:
You can also select the “Open in GitHub” option if you want to view details about the PR that are not available in PR Focus, such as looking at the PR diff.
You might want to watch a PR if:
You might want to ignore a PR if:
When you watch a PR, it goes into your Watched PRs list, both in the Repository Dashboard and in the All Repositories Dashboard.
When you ignore a PR, it goes into the Ignored PRs Dashboard.
When you are assigned to a PR, you are a PR reviewer, or the PR was made by you, Watch or Ignore has no effect. Watching such a PR does not move it into your Watched PRs list, and ignoring such a PR does not move it to the Ignored PRs dashboard.
This is an intentional design decision so you don’t miss important work that requires your attention. If you have a use case for changing this functionality, please send me an email or file a feature request.
If you Watch or Ignore an incoming PR, and later you become a reviewer or an assignee, it moves from your Watched PRs list or your Ignored PRs dashboard to the respective column.
Watch and Ignore are mutually exclusive options. If you have previously watched a PR, and then press the Ignore button, PR Focus stops watching the PR and moves it into the Ignored PRs dashboard. If you have previously ignored a PR, and then press the Watch button, PR Focus stops ignoring it and moves it from the Ignored PRs dashboard back to the Watched PRs list.
If you choose to Stop Watching or Stop Ignoring a PR, and the PR is open, it goes back to your Inbox, or to your Inactive PRs dashboard. If the PR is closed, it goes back to your Inbox or Archived PRs dashboard.
You can change the watch or ignore status in the same ways you can set it - from right-clicking on a PR Summary or while viewing the PR Details.
When you’re viewing a Repository Dashboard or the All Repositories Dashboard, you can click into a PR Summary to get a detailed view of the pull request.
The PR Details view contains:
Each commit in the list of commits contains:
The list of commits displays in chronological reverse order, with the most recent commit at the top of the list.
Status Checks in PR Focus refer to a list of jobs or statuses associated with a PR. These may be GitHub workflow runs, CI jobs, or other required checks that repository rules enforce on a PR.
Each status check in the list of status checks contains:
X mark for failing checksPR Focus displays the status checks for the branch head commit sha at the time of the last fetch job. This information may not match the current state of status checks if:
Status checks or workflow runs come from GitHub in many different structures. PR Focus is still fine-tuning the best way to get the relevant status checks for the branch head. If you are missing status checks that you expect to see, please let me know these details (if the repo is public and you are able to share):
Feel free to file an issue, send me an email, or contact me directly with these details. Thank you!
Each review in the list of reviews contains:
The list of reviews displays in chronological reverse order, with the most recent review at the top of the list.
Each comment in the list of comments contains:
The list of comments displays in chronological reverse order, with the most recent comment at the top of the list.
Note: In PR Focus v0.2.0, I added a module to parse GitHub-flavored Markdown to nicely formatted text in the PR Detail view. I have seen some impact to performance when scrolling comment lists since adding this module. If you have performance issues when scrolling, the UI should un-freeze again after a short delay. Please let me know if you run into this issue so I can troubleshoot and potentially re-evaluate using this module.
When you view PR Details, you see a button that lets you ignore the PR.
When you press the Ignore button, the pull request goes into the Ignored PRs Dashboard.
This dashboard is a list of PRs that you’ve ignored.
You can access the Ignored PRs Dashboard by pressing the Ignored PRs button in the PR Focus sidebar.
At any time, you can stop ignoring a PR.
To stop ignoring a PR:
This moves the PR out of your Ignored PRs Dashboard and into the Inbox.
If you want an ignored PR to move directly to your Watched PRs list, press the Watch button instead of the Stop Ignoring button. This automatically stops ignoring the PR and moves it directly to your Watched PRs list.
If you try to ignore a PR where you are an assignee, a reviewer, or where the PR is yours, it does not move into the Ignored PRs Dashboard. It stays in the relevant column in the Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard.
This is an intentional design decision to prevent you from missing important work that requires your attention.
If you have previously ignored a PR, but you later become an assignee or reviewer, the PR moves out of the Ignored PRs Dashboard and into the relevant column in the Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard.
This is an intentional design decision to prevent you from missing important work that requires your attention.
Sometimes, a PR sits for a long time without progress. This may be because:
In these cases, you may still care about the eventual outcome of the PR, but it becomes clutter sitting around in your regular repository dashboards while no activity is occurring. You may not want to Stop Watching or Ignore a PR, but may want to get it out of your way.
This is the case that Inactive PRs solves.
After some interval, a PR that hasn’t had updates moves to the Inactive PRs Dashboard. This dashboard is a list of PRs that have become inactive.
You can click into the PR Summary for an inactive PR to view the PR Details.
A PR becoming inactive is one of two ways in which a PR can move out of:
The only other way a PR can move out of these columns is when it becomes archived, or if you are no longer an assignee or a reviewer.
You can configure the Days until inactive setting from:
Unless you have customized either the global or the repository setting for days until inactive, the default value for this setting is 30 days.
There is no way to manually move a PR out of the Inactive PRs dashboard and back into your Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard.
When a PR receives updates again, it moves out of the Inactive PRs dashboard and back into your Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard.
If you change the value of the Days until inactive setting to a longer time interval, PR Focus recalculates whether PRs should be inactive and moves any PRs that no longer meet this setting. In this case, PR Focus moves inactive PRs back into your Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard.
Some workflows call for you to be able to view PRs after they have been closed or merged. You may still want to see those PRs in your Repository Dashboard or All Repositories Dashboard for a period of time after the PR status has become closed or merged.
PR Focus is optimized for this case. PRs do not disappear from your repository views immediately when they get closed. Instead, they remain in your repository views for a number of days until they are archived. The default value for this setting is 10 days, but you can configure the number of days until a PR is archived.
After some interval, a PR that has been closed or merged moves to the Archived PRs Dashboard. This dashboard is a list of PRs that have become archived.
You can click into the PR Summary for an archived PR to view the PR Details.
A PR becoming archived is one of two ways in which a PR can move out of:
The only other way a PR can move out of these columns is when it becomes inactive, or if you are no longer an assignee or a reviewer.
Watched PRs also become archived, which automatically moves them from your Watched PRs list to the Archived PRs dashboard.
You can configure the Days until archive setting from:
Unless you have customized either the global or the repository setting for days until inactive, the default value for this setting is 10 days.
You don’t have to wait until a PR moves to archived automatically. You can immediately archive a closed or merged PR. Right click on a closed or merged PR summary in a repository dashboard, and you’ll see the Archive PR option. This option is not available for open PRs.
There is no way to manually move a PR out of the Archived PRs dashboard and back into your Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard.
PR Focus v0.5 provides the ability to delete archived PRs. When you’re viewing the Archived PRs dashboard, you can press the Delete PRs button to delete all PRs that are archived.
This button is disabled when a background job is running. If you’re unable to press the Delete PRs button, wait for background jobs to finish and try again.
PR Focus has a few global settings you can configure from the Settings menu option in the PR Focus menu.
Selecting this option opens a window where you can customize global default settings for PR Focus for:
You can customize the lists displayed in your Repository Dashboard and All Repositories Dashboard. Check or uncheck the Show Assigned PRs or Show Reviewing PRs checkboxes to show or hide those lists in your dashboards.
This is a global setting that defaults to showing the Reviewing PRs list and hiding the Assigned PRs list.
You can override these global settings on a per-repository basis. For example, if you watch many repositories in which you are a reviewer, but only one in which you may be an assignee, you may want to leave the global Assigned PRs setting unchecked, and specify it only for the repository where you need this information.
For more information about customizing settings for a repository, refer to Repository Settings.
The Days Until Inactive and Days Until Archive settings are used to determine the time interval for when PR Focus should move PRs into the Inactive PRs or Archived PRs dashboards.
The global settings default to 30 days until inactive and 10 days until archive.
You can override these global settings on a per-repository basis. For example, if you watch many repositories in which you want to archive PRs right away, but one repository in which you want to leave closed or merged PRs in your dashboard view for a period of time, you can set the global days until archive setting to a low value, and customize the repo where you want it to have a longer value.
For more information about customizing settings for a repository, refer to Repository Settings.
PR Focus uses a GitHub API key to make calls to GitHub. You can view and update the GitHub API key from the Manage API Key menu option in the PR Focus menu.
Selecting this option opens a window where you can view details about your GitHub API Key, or update it.
When your API key expires, PR Focus can no longer fetch updates. PR Focus warns you when the API key is close to expiring or if it has expired. You can view the expiration date of the current API key anytime from this window.
You can change the API key that PR Focus uses to make API calls to GitHub.
Press the Edit API Key button to provide a new API access token.
For details about generating a GitHub access token, refer to the GitHub Authentication documentation page Manage Personal Access Tokens.
GitHub provides two types of access tokens:
The required permissions for PR Focus to fetch pull request data vary depending on which type of access token you create. If you are not seeing pull requests after adding a repository to PR Focus, verify that your API access token has the appropriate permissions for the repository.
GitHub’s fine-grained access token provides the most precise control over what a user can access. As a result, PR Focus needs a number of permissions to get all the data it needs. PR Focus requires:
Repository permissions
Account permissions
If you’re using a Classic access token, it must have the following permissions:
repo read permissions for any repository you want to watch in PR Focus.user read permissions to get your username and avatar for use in the app.If your organization uses SAML single sign-on (SSO), you must configure SSO for your personal access token after you create it. For more details, refer to the GitHub Authentication documentation page Authorizing a personal access token for use with SAML single sign-on.
When you enter the access token, PR Focus saves it securely to your macOS Apple Keychain. PR Focus does not store your access token directly in the app code or otherwise transmit it except to make API calls to GitHub. If you ever want to remove your access token from Keychain, you can find it in the Keychain Access app.
Note that if you remove your access token from Keychain, PR Focus can no longer make API calls to GitHub. This means PR Focus will no longer be able to fetch PR updates or new PRs.
When you provide an access token during setup, if your access token has the appropriate permissions, PR Focus uses it to create a User Profile in the app for you. It reads your GitHub username and avatar and displays it in this window. PR Focus uses this information to determine whether a PR was made by you, and whether you are a reviewer or assigned to a PR.
If your access token doesn’t have the appropriate permissions, PR Focus can’t fetch your user profile and can’t proceed with the initial user setup.
PR Focus does not currently support having multiple GitHub user profiles. If this is something you need, please file a feature request.
Need help with PR Focus?
Currently, the app is in private alpha on TestFlight.
When slots open for the closed beta, PR Focus will announce the availability of beta test spots on its Mastodon account.
You can use one of these methods to get help:
Note: I’m so excited you’re interested in PR Focus, but I’m just one person and developing this app is not my day job. I will do my best to get back to you quickly, but can’t make any guarantees about response times. Thank you for your patience, and for helping me make PR Focus more awesome!
The PR Focus Help menu has several options to make it easier to get help. While PR Focus is running, select the Help menu to:
To submit feedback through TestFlight:
Currently, PR Focus is in a private beta with people I know personally. Use a method you know to reach me personally.
The PR Focus macOS app repository is private. You can file a GitHub issue on the PR Focus website for suggestions or improvements for the documentation, or for the PR Focus app. When filing an issue, please label your issue with PR Focus App or PR Focus Website for a faster response.
If you prefer not to provide details publicly in a GitHub issue, you can send me a support email.
PR Focus keeps logs of events in the app while the app is running. These logs disappear when you close the app.
The logs contain information about activity in the app, and can be a helpful resource for debugging unexpected behaviors while the app is in beta. When you encounter something unexpected, please check the logs for any relevant error messages.
I’m doing ongoing work to add more log messages and make them clearer. Please let me know if you think something should have appeared in the logs but wasn’t there, or if something appeared in an unexpected or unhelpful way in the logs.
To view the logs, go to the Logs menu, and select View Logs.
This opens the log view, which is a chronological list of activities in PR Focus:
The logs can help you identify when the automated fetch isn’t running at the time you expect, what PRs PR Focus is seeing in a repository, and other helpful debugging information.
You can sort the log by ascending or descending view. Press the up arrow or down arrow to sort the logs by ascending or descending order.
To clear log entries, press the Clear Log button. This removes all log entries.
If you leave PR Focus running overnight, PR Focus automatically trims logs more than a day old.