focus-blocker - Stardance

Ship #1 Pending review

FOR REVIEWERS:
PLEASE TRY IT OUT USING GITHUB RELEASE (click try project). I promise it’ll not take too long.

If you don’t wanna do that, here is a short video link showing the extension in action. It is basically what I’ve built: https://cdn.hackclub.com/01a174b9-9f17-76d3-8146-fb1cd9a867c1/focus-block-demo.mp4

SHIP:
This I think is genuinely useful. I already am using it. Features are listed in project description. In this ship,

I worked on the desktop app a lot (not finished, only extension shipped).
main work was turning desktop app blocking from a slow background scanner into an instant system-level blocker
fixed several Windows edge cases, and putting together simple scripts so anyone can run and test the app.

Imo, the most challenging part is the overlap of configurations for the extension. Each customization must work with all others. For eg, blocked and allowed list overlap should work with the focus session and block sites accordignly. Focus session should work with any of session end challenge.

I am actually proud of the challenges in the extension. They may seem simple, but man are they effective… It’s genuinely helpful thats why I love it. Like if u wanna stop and get ditracted, solve a couple math questions, or type a paragraph… Its perfect!

To test, info given on top of the ship message + readme + project desc.

I am hopinh to work on the desktop app and really turn this into a product.

THANK YOU AND HAVE FUN!

3 devlogs
6h

Try project → See source code →

Open comments for this post

@ArHIM on focus-blocker · 6 days ago

1h 11m 53s logged

READY TO SHIP.

I cleaned up minor UI confusion and made it clear for anyone who opens the extension to understand what’s happening and start using it instantly.

Also removed friction (unnecesary settings user needed to decide) so someone can instantly go into focus session.

Lastly, made the schedule screen easy to pick. At first glance, all know whats happening.

Open comments for this post

@ArHIM on focus-blocker · 10 days ago

1h 29m 37s logged

ALMOST READY TO SHIP LETS GOO!

I made a pre-built zip file to get it ready to ship. I also compiled the extension files for popup UI, and background worker.

Then ran the package script to put everything into a neat zip file called focus-blocker-v0.2.0.zip.

The zip contains only the actual extension files and icons. So no one needs to download the whole thing or install node to try it out.

So I pushed the code. Created a 0.2.0 version tag and published release to github with the zip file. And added simple instructions to README.

To try it, just download the zip file. Unzip it.

Then go to chrome://extensions.

Activate Developer mode. And click on Load unpacked.

And that’s it! Try it out!

Open comments for this post

@ArHIM on focus-blocker · 10 days ago

3h 10m 40s logged

Holy efficiency!

Primary changes were to revamp how blocking of windows apps works. It used to poll open windows periodically - so there would be a delay of a few seconds before closing a blocked app. Now the background service just gets a process creation event. If a blocked app tries to open, the app detection works right away to close it.

Made a screen for the blocked app in the desktop ui. Added a Back to Focus button. Also added some debouncing to not get popup’d too much if an app tries to reopen itself.

Fixed a number of corner cases for apps that were getting through. For example, some apps/games can be launched through another launcher, so added some checks to find the actual program binary. Did some trimming of the windows path prefixes. Fixed some edge cases with really long file paths. Removed the background toast notifications (which were silently failing, b/c background services on windows operate in Session 0)

In developer area, I grouped all the startup/test commands into start.bat and test.bat as two batch files. Got the desktop test suite a bit faster by switching from Vitest to happy-dom. Added some mocked data so we can test the frontend without the bg service running. Lastly but not least, cleaned up dead network filter code.