How much extra work could you get done over the course of a day if you had an assistant looking over your shoulder, shooing you away from the biggest time-sucks of the Internet like Facebook and YouTube? If you’d like to find out, there’s a new extension for Google’s Chrome Browser that, in a way, can serve as that assistant, knowing that most of us lack the self-control to avoid things like wasting time on Facebook, going on epic Netflix binge-a-thons and watching one cat video on YouTube after another.
It’s a free extension called UnDistracted, and it’s set up to block certain sites entirely where you probably waste the most time — or you can even selectively block access to certain parts of those sites.
Setting up the extension is pretty straightforward. If you want to block any of the sites entirely that we’ve listed below, you can set up a redirection target — like, say, the Google home page, where you’d be redirected if the extension sees you trying to check out Facebook after this has been installed. The extension will, of course, request access to the destinations mentioned below as an additional permission, and it’s also worth pointing out that this should work in Chromium-based browsers like Opera, as well.
As with any extension like this that filters sites — and there are others, from companies like AdBlock — it’s meant to offset the user’s lack of self-control. A lack of self-control that could also lead the user to just … disable the extension, eventually, but hopefully you won’t do that.
Without further ado, let’s walk through the features that the UnDistracted extension can be used to block on the user’s behalf. We should note, you can also control any of the settings below individually for additional personalization:
- You can block the site entirely
- Hide the News Feed
- Hide likes and comments
- Hide the Chat sidebar
YouTube
- You can block YouTube entirely
- Hide the main feed
- Hide the left sidebar
- Hide comments
- Hide “up next” suggestions
- Block Twitter entirely
- Hide trends
- Hide “who to follow”
- Hide all images and video
- You can block Reddit entirely
- Block r/popular
- Block r/all
Netflix
- Block Netflix entirely
- Hide recommendations (which hides everything except “Continue Watching” and “My List”)
- Hide “continue watching”
- Hide “My List”
This extension is free in the Chrome Web Store, and we recommend installing it immediately.
