Focus mode takes everything off the screen except the thing you are studying, and walks you through it one step at a time. It is the single best answer to "I open a lesson and then I am somehow reading about the Silk Road" — which is a real hazard on a site this large.
Watch: Focus mode
1 min 37 s · presented by Jason, Mandarin Temple's AI tutor
Captions are part of the picture, under Jason. The full transcript is below.
Read the transcript
- Hi, I’m Jason, Mandarin Temple’s AI tutor. Here’s how focus mode works.
- Focus mode works on pages with a clear order, like this HSK 1 lesson. To begin, select Start Learning in Focus Mode.
- The menus and banners step aside, so it’s just you and the lesson, one section at a time.
- Select Next to move on. The counter at the top shows where you are: step two of twelve. And Back takes you to the step before.
- Your progress for the lesson is up here. Give a section a moment, like Understanding, and it’s counted.
- To change the backdrop, select Change scene. Plain keeps things simple, or pick a picture, like Shanghai at Dusk. Your choice is remembered in this browser.
- You can always find me here, on the right. Select me, and the questions I suggest follow the step you’re on. Focus mode itself doesn’t use any AI credits. Asking me a question does, and that’s always up to you.
- When you’re finished, select Exit, or press Escape.
- You’re back on the regular page, at the section you reached, and what you completed is still ticked off.
- That’s focus mode: one section at a time, at your own pace. Try it on your next lesson.
Open the video guide on its own page, with its key moments
What it does
- Removes the chrome — Navigation, the red banner, the footer, the mascot — all gone. What is left is the content, a slim header and a pill with Back and Next.
- Splits the page into steps — One section at a time with Back and Next, instead of a long scroll where it is unclear how much is left.
- Shows how far through you are — The pill names the step you are on and counts them, "3 / 12". The header shows how many of the page's checkpoints you have completed.
- Puts a background behind it — Eighteen of them, from Plain to the Temple of Heaven, Victoria Harbour and the Longji rice terraces. Pick one and this browser remembers it.
Where you can use it
Most things worth reading end to end: HSK and module lessons, dictionary entries, grammar points, culture articles, reading and listening passages, writing and speaking practice, the day’s Dragon Daily, and flashcard review.
Look for "Start Learning in Focus Mode" near the top of the page, or the "Focus" link beside a section heading to start at that section. If neither is there, that page does not have a focus flow.
Moving through it
Next and Back in the pill take you a step at a time. On a phone or tablet you can also swipe: left for the next step, right for the one before.
The round buttons at the bottom left change the scene and play ambient sound. On most pages Jason has his own button at the bottom right, with his face on it: open it to ask him about the step you are on. His suggested questions change as you move from step to step.
It still counts
The checkpoints are the same ones as on the regular page. A reading section counts once you have spent a moment on it or moved on from it, and an exercise counts when you finish it — the same XP, the same progress bar. Leaving focus mode partway through loses nothing; what you finished stays finished.
Getting out
Select Exit at the right of the pill — on a phone it is just the cross — or press Esc. You land back on the regular page at the section you were on.
Common questions
Focus mode itself does not: it is a way of displaying a page you can already read. The one thing inside it that uses AI credits is Ask Jason, and only when you send him a question. An answer costs 5 credits, plus a little for anything he looks up to give it, such as your plan and progress or the page’s podcast, and never more than 10. Under each answer he says what he looked at and what it cost.