Looking for particular type of internet restriction software/app
December 16, 2015 11:29 AM   Subscribe

I'm interested in restricting my own use of time-killing websites at home so as to increase my productivity. I see that there are a number of apps or programs that do this in different ways, and some of these techniques would be good. But I haven't found one that works in the way that I think would work best for me. Is something like that available? Details on the kind of functionality I'm looking for are below. P.S. I'm willing to pay up to maybe $50 for the right kind of software.

My ideal internet restricting program would work like this: for each week (or day, or whatever) I would have an allotted amount of time (set by myself) that I'm allowed to use my defined restricted sites - i.e. aggregate use for all of them combined. I could access any of those restricted websites at any time, but once I hit that time limit I would be completely locked out of them until the defined time period was up. A weaker but okay version of this would be a simple timer that would keep track of my time on defined websites; I could monitor this and do a self-imposed lock-out of those sites once I hit my time limit.
posted by Mechitar to Technology (6 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thoughts on the free LeechBlock?
posted by enfa at 11:39 AM on December 16, 2015


Response by poster: Enfa, LeechBlock sounds like EXACTLY what I was looking for, and even an improvement on the concept. I don't normally use Firefox at home, but will be happy to if this thing works the way I think it does. Thanks for a great response, and in record time at that!
posted by Mechitar at 11:46 AM on December 16, 2015


Take a look at RescueTime. The free version acts as an analytics service that logs all of your computer use and then categorizes it for you. That includes not only the websites that you visit, but also the apps that you use. Many sites have default categories/descriptions but you can change them for your own personal use. So, looking at my past month I see I've been on ask.metafilter.com , a "News & Opinion : General" site deemed "Very Distracting" and that a dispiriting 44% of my web use in general has been "Very Distracting". Or, on the app front, I've used the media player VLC for nine hours this month. You can get e-mail updates rounding up all of your activity and the dashboard is pretty comprehensive. It's a separate program that runs on OSX/Windows/Linux/Android. The extensions for Chrome and Firefox are more to make it easier to see your current productivity levels, and aren't required for the logging as a whole.

The paid version is on sale through the new year. For $36 you can set up a variety of alerts and blocks that trigger during certain hours, after an aggregate amount of use for a day/week/month etc. Normally the price is $72 and I'm glad you asked this question, because now I'm going to try the paid version.
posted by scottdavidsanders at 11:58 AM on December 16, 2015


Seconding Leechblock for Firefox.

And if you use Chrome, then StayFocusd is what you're looking for.
posted by pyro979 at 12:06 PM on December 16, 2015


There's also WasteNoTime for Safari and Chrome.

(The thing with all these is turning them on. They do help when that happens. Good luck.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:23 PM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


Another one: Freedom.to
posted by Leontine at 7:31 PM on December 16, 2015


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