Focus Firewall helps reclaim time, improve online habits and context switching by blocking distracting websites & apps during your working hours. People average 2 hours a day on social media/streaming. Our mission is to help gradually reduce that number.
Hi there, developer here. Thank you for checking out Focus Firewall and please reach out if you have any questions/feedback/anything.
Short backstory:
Back in the day when I was a student and a geeky Linux user, a friend taught me how to block websites by editing a file in the system (/etc/hosts), sort of a hack. As someone who would often get lost in the Wikipedia spiral and spent hours endless scrolling on Twitter, this helped me a lot and I found myself often blocking those websites whenever I needed to focus.
Fast-forward to the present, I'm remote/WFH and having trouble focusing and constantly getting distracted by YouTube/X. I'd watch a video and then watch another. I scrolled on Twitter mindlessly.
Having worked at big tech, it's scary to know how many smart people are tasked with increasing daily active users or total time spent in the platforms. Trying to resist the recommendation algos is hard, and it's an uneven playing field. It's like you're fighting a super robot with a whole lot more resources than you.
Once I found myself doing the same hack back from school days to focus, I figured why not build an app. I looked around and found a couple that could help, but I wanted to take a lighter and more forgiving approach and couldn't resist the fun of building a new thing.
I hope this app helps you as it's been helping me, but remember to keep it light. Lasting change takes time and making small progress every day is better than going too intense. Remember to take breaks!
PS: App has a 1-week free trial and then subscriptions start at $3.99 or equivalent for your country.
Focus Firewall
Focus Firewall