Quartz - Website Blocker & Daily Screen Time Limits

Quartz is a website blocker that works on a daily time limit instead of a switch. Block distracting websites completely, or give each one a number of minutes a day and let it close itself when they run out. Half an hour of YouTube. Fifteen minutes of X. Nothing at all for the one you already know you shouldn't open. When a site's time is gone, it closes for the rest of the day and comes back at midnight. FIRST, THE PART NOBODY SAYS OUT LOUD You are not weak. The feed you keep failing to put down was built by teams of the smartest people alive, tested against millions of other people's attention, and improved every single week. You are one person, at the end of a long day, deciding on the spot. That was never a fair fight, and losing it is not a character flaw. So Quartz doesn't ask you to try harder. It asks you to decide once, while you're thinking clearly, and then it holds you to it. HOW IT WORKS 1. Pick the sites you lose time to. Sixteen of the usual suspects are one click each, and you can type in any other website. 2. Give each one its own daily time limit: 5 minutes to 3 hours, or Never. 3. Carry on. The toolbar badge shows what's left of whichever site you're on. Time only counts while the site is actually in front of you. Switch tabs, switch to another app, lock the screen, walk away, and the clock stops. Watching a video counts even though you aren't touching anything, because a blocker that only notices typing freezes on exactly the thing you're trying to limit. WHEN THE TIME RUNS OUT The tab you're on turns into the blocked page, and the website will not load again today. Not a warning, not a banner you can dismiss, no "continue anyway". Give a site a limit of Never and it doesn't open at all, from the first minute of the day. There is a way back, and it costs something. Extra time takes three deliberate acts: say what you need the site for, type out a sentence stating the price including the streak it ends, then hold a button down for five seconds. One grant a day by default. Set it to None and there's no door at all. THE PART THAT MAKES IT WORK: THE SETTINGS ARE LOCKED TOO Every website blocker has the same hole. You get stopped, you open settings, you drag the slider, and you're back on the site in four seconds. All the friction sits on the door that's being watched and none on the window next to it. Quartz taxes the window as well, and only in one direction: • Tightening is always free. Lower a limit, set a site to Never, add a site, take away your own extra time. No wait, no gate, no confirmation. Taxing someone for making their own rules stricter would be the product working against them. • Loosening costs a decision. Raising a limit, lifting a Never, removing a site, allowing yourself more extra time: you ask, a short pause separates asking from doing, and then the same three-step gate opens. Say what you need to change, type out what you're choosing, hold the button down. Settings then stay editable for five minutes and lock themselves again. The direction is the whole idea. The rules you set at 9am are the ones worth keeping at 4pm, so the way out of them is three deliberate acts instead of one drag: one button is a reflex, three acts are a decision. Backing out is free at every step, and a request you never use expires on its own. It's enforced in the background, not by the settings page hiding its own controls, so a second tab, a stale window or the popup is not a way past it. WHAT ELSE YOU GET • The remaining minutes on the toolbar badge, so the number is never something you have to go and look for. • A quiet note in the corner of the page before a site runs out, at 3, 5 or 10 minutes. Or off. • Clean days. A day is clean if you finish it without taking extra time. The blocked page knows how long your run is and says so at the exact moment you're deciding whether to push through it. • Subdomains come with the site. Block youtube.com and m.youtube.com goes too. Give music.youtube.com its own tighter limit and the more specific one wins. • A fresh limit at your local midnight. Nothing to reset by hand. • Keyboard and screen reader support throughout, including the limit sliders. YOUR BROWSING NEVER LEAVES YOUR BROWSER Quartz has no account, no sign-in, and no server holding anything of yours. Your list of sites, your limits and your time are stored in your own browser and are never transmitted anywhere. Quartz does send anonymous counts of how the extension itself is used: setup finished, a limit reached, extra time taken. They are grouped under a random number generated on your own machine. Those counts never include a website address of any kind: not one you typed in, and not one of the suggested sites either. One switch in settings turns them off, and then nothing leaves at all. Website icons come from Chrome's own local favicon cache rather than a third-party icon service, so looking at your own list never tells anyone what's on it. Quartz needs access to the sites you browse, and that's a real permission worth reading about before you install. It's what lets the extension notice which website is in front of you, count the seconds, and close the page when the limit is gone. It never reads page content, form fields, passwords or browsing history, and none of that is ever sent anywhere. WHAT IT DELIBERATELY DOESN'T DO No scheduling or time windows. No cross-device sync. No password protection. No whole-category blocking. No mobile version. One idea, done properly: every website gets a number of minutes a day, and the way back costs something. Free, with no paid tier and nothing to upgrade to.