Willpower: a modern SelfControl replacement

[raviriley]

TLDR I made a free & open source app that improves upon SelfControl functionality, find it here.

Summary

I like SelfControl but I wanted the ability to:

• have more than one blocklist for different purposes
• schedule times that I want the blocklist to be active
• turn blocklists on when I visit a distracting site too many times
  • or even just block that one site if I visit it too many times
  • not just visiting a domain but a specific path
    → for example, if I watch 2 YouTube shorts (youtube.com/shorts/...) in a row, turn youtube.com off for an hour.

Solution

I created Willpower, inspired by SelfControl. All the same benefits plus the ones above, and uses modern macOS APIs. Yes, this is a shameless plug.

The only part that depends on the app being open is the BrowserMonitor visit-based triggers - so I made it a menu bar app when quit.

A few known limitations with both apps:

• blocks can't persist through VPNs or proxies
• only domains can be blocked, not specific paths (ie can block youtube.com but can't block youtube.com/shorts)
  • this is part of the reason I added triggers to my app so that I can still turn on blocking for specific paths, which is almost just as good

Check out the repo or website, feedback and suggestions are welcome!

note: I made an issue (#920) before realizing I could post here