Focusgate — Website Blocker & Schedules

Focusgate keeps the websites that eat your time closed while you work: during a focus session you start with one click, or on a weekly schedule that switches itself on and off. WHY THIS ONE Many blockers want an account, show ads or collect usage data. Focusgate does none of that. There is nothing to sign up for, no advertising and no analytics. Your lists, timetables and counters stay in your browser's local storage on this computer, and the addresses you visit are never saved or sent anywhere. The one thing it keeps about your browsing is a per-domain count of how many times it stopped you, also on this computer, and you can clear it in Settings. It asks only for the permissions a blocker cannot do without, and you can check them in its manifest: there is no access to all sites, so it cannot read or change what is on any page. WHAT IT DOES • Focus sessions: choose 15, 25, 45, 60, 90 or 120 minutes, or ∞ to keep going until you stop it, and press Start. Tabs already open on a listed site are covered too. • Schedules: for example Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 18:00. Ranges that cross midnight, such as 22:00 to 02:00, behave as you would expect. • Precise lists: a domain includes its subdomains, so facebook.com also covers m.facebook.com. Add a path to narrow it down: youtube.com/shorts stops only that section and leaves the rest open. • A starter list with six common time sinks, ready on install and yours to edit. The popup also offers to add whatever you are looking at with one click. • "Let me through for a few minutes": a temporary pass (5 minutes by default) for when you really need that page. When it runs out, the tab goes back behind the gate even if you have not clicked anything. • When blocking ends, every tab that was stopped returns to the address it was trying to open. • Remaining minutes on the toolbar icon (you can turn this off), light and dark themes, and a backup file to move your setup to another computer. FREE AND PRO Free, with no time limit: one list with up to 10 sites, one automatic schedule, unlimited manual sessions and unlimited temporary passes. Pro: unlimited lists, sites and schedules; strict mode, for manual and scheduled blocking alike; your own daily cap on passes, which is what turns the gate into a real barrier; and stats: how often each domain pulled at you, hours of focus and passes used. Pro costs US$3.99 a month or US$19 a year, and there is a 7-day free trial. The trial starts on this computer the moment you press "Try 7 days free": no card, no email, one per installation. Payments are handled by Polar on its own checkout page, so the extension never sees your card and never asks for your email. After you pay, Polar emails you a licence key; paste it in Settings > Focusgate Pro and the extension checks it with Polar every now and then. That check carries no lists and no browsing data. WHAT IT CANNOT DO, SAID UP FRONT • Incognito: Chrome gives no extension access to Incognito windows until you switch it on yourself in chrome://extensions. Focusgate cannot ask for it, but Settings tells you when it is off. • Strict mode is a deliberate speed bump, not a security control. It prevents ending a session early, disables passes and makes lists and timetables read-only while it runs, but anyone can still turn the extension off from Chrome. • It steps in when navigation starts rather than at the network level, so you may see the page flash for an instant before the gate appears. For breaking a habit that does not matter; this is not an ad blocker. • Nothing syncs between computers, on purpose. Use the backup file to copy your setup. YOUR GO-AHEAD COMES FIRST The first time it runs, Focusgate explains exactly what it does with tab addresses and waits for you to accept. Until you do, it looks at no tab and stops nothing.