Fed up with wasting time online? If you’re addicted to watching hundreds of Youtube videos, stumbling through Facebook or Twitter, reading news all the time, LeechBlock is for you. This extensions allows you to intentionally block the time-eating websites within specified periods of the day or limit the daily time you are willing to sacrifice for reading them.
As you read a post about customizing your web browser, there is a great chance you need this extension. It lets you control what you’re doing in the Internet in a more conscious way. Blocking a website, the extension reminds you that you wanted to limit time spent there.
LeechBlock is highly customizable. In order to change it settings go to Tools » Addons » LeechBlock Options
You can divide the time sucking websites into sets. I have two groups myself – Social networks and News sites.
Each set can have assigned different times and rules.
For inspiration, check out these exemplary settings.
What happens when you try to enter a website while you’re not supposed to visit it, depends on the settings of the set. You can be redirected to any local or online page or see a default extension’s page:
New websites can be easily added to block sets with context menu item (right click anywhere on a page you wish to add to one of your block sets).
Make disabling LeechBlock as difficult, as possible
While deciding to install LeechBlock may be a hard decision, keeping to it is even harder… If you think your will may be not strong enough, use the extensions settings which make uninstalling or turning it off really strenuous.
Block set option tab contains “Prevent access to options for this block set at times when these sites are blocked.” option.
In the General settings tab you can disable “Disable” and “Uninstall” buttons for the extension and set a password required for changing the extension’s settings – the longer, the more discouraging it’s going to be.
The point is, of course, giving you time to control your bad habits and take a conscious decision about visiting a website or going back to more productive tasks.