TaskRoket: Site Lock

Blocks distracting sites behind a PIN.

TaskRoket: Site Lock does one thing and does it without decoration: it is a site blocker for Chrome that keeps the same few addresses out of your browser. You add a domain a single time, and every page on that host — every subdomain too — stops loading before it can draw anything on screen. No dashboard, no streak, no gamified nonsense. A short list and one switch. Why a site blocker only works when it is a little inconvenient Most website blockers break down at the exit, not at the entrance. Installation is a minute of work. Removal is a click in the toolbar, and the site you were avoiding is right back where it was. You made the decision to stop scrolling while you were calm and thinking clearly; you will need the block at the exact moment you are least interested in defending it. A lock that opens in two seconds is not a boundary. It is a note to yourself that boundaries are negotiable. Maybe you already searched for a website blocker for Chrome, installed one, and turned it off before dinner. The list was rarely the problem. The escape hatch was. This extension installs exactly one speed bump: a PIN that you invent. It is not a security product and never claims to be one. It is friction in front of the part of your brain that wants the site anyway, and four digits typed with one thumb usually break the automatic reach for a new tab. That is all a pin protected blocker needs to do to hold up on a rough day. What the extension does • Blocks a whole domain plus every subdomain. Add youtube.com and m.youtube.com, www.youtube.com and the rest of them answer to the same rule, so when you block youtube you never maintain a list of individual addresses. • Blocks before rendering starts. Chrome's declarative network rules do the work, so no page begins to paint and no content script has to run inside it. • Accepts non-Latin domains. Addresses typed in Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese or Greek get converted to the form the browser actually resolves, so пример.рф and münchen.de behave the way you expect. • Wildcards when the list needs them. A leading star, as in *.news.example, covers the base domain and every subdomain under it with one entry. • A schedule. Run blocking only in the hours and on the days you pick — weekday work hours, say. A window that crosses midnight, like 22:00 to 06:00, is handled properly. • A short popup. The first eight blocked sites, three counters (pages blocked, sites in the list, time left in the current schedule window), one switch. • An options page in everyday language. Four cards: the lock, the PIN, the schedule and a privacy note. No advanced mode hiding the real settings. How the PIN works The code is set on the options page. Four characters minimum, entered twice on setup so a stray keystroke cannot lock you out of your own list. Your code is never written down: the extension derives a key with PBKDF2-SHA256, 150 000 iterations and a random salt, and stores only that hash locally. There is no plain text PIN sitting in the profile, and nothing leaves the machine to verify it. You will be asked for the PIN when you turn the lock off, when you delete a site, when you change the code, and when you reset the settings. Turning the lock on, adding a site and adjusting the schedule require nothing at all. Stopping should be the hard part; starting should not. Five wrong tries pause the dialog for a minute. That will not stop a determined person with developer tools — nothing inside a browser extension will — but it does stop the “just mash keys until it opens” reflex. The code exists only in this browser profile. How blocking works, technically The extension is built on the declarativeNetRequest API. Whenever the list changes, or the schedule opens or closes, the extension rebuilds its dynamic rules: one blocking rule per domain, matching the main frame and the sub frames of that host and its subdomains. Chrome evaluates those rules inside the network stack, which explains two things — a blocked site shows the browser's own error page, and the extension never needs to touch page content. Two permissions, no more. “storage” keeps your settings and the PIN hash. “declarativeNetRequest” creates the rules. There is no host permission whatsoever, so the extension cannot read the pages you visit, cannot see their addresses and has no way to inject anything into them. What it does not do • It does not block ads, trackers or pop-ups. A rule blocks an entire site, not pieces of a page. • It does not filter by keyword or category. The list is explicit, and you are the one who writes it — which is what makes it a practical self control tool instead of another feed to organize. • It does not sync across devices and has no account. All of it stays in this profile. • It does not collect analytics or phone home. There is no server on the other end. • It cannot survive a reinstall. Chrome wipes an extension's local storage when the extension is removed, and the list, the schedule and the PIN go with it. Wiping the profile does the same thing. That last point deserves to be said plainly: this is a tool aimed at your own behavior, not a lock aimed at somebody else. Anyone who can uninstall an extension can remove the block. If the boundary has to hold against another person, this is the wrong product, and no extension in the store can honestly promise otherwise. Who it is for It fits students who trade an evening of short videos for a deadline, developers who open a news site “for a second” and surface forty minutes later, remote workers who need the workday to feel like a workday, and anyone who has already installed a focus app, killed it on the first hard afternoon and uninstalled it quietly. It also fits the narrower case: one or two sites are the problem, not the internet. Block social media in the two places that eat your evening and keep the rest of the web where it is. A vague intention to block distracting websites in general falls apart by Thursday; a rule that names three domains tends to hold. How to start in a minute Install it, click the toolbar icon, hit “Add site” and type a domain. Blocking starts immediately, and the badge counts how many rules are live. Then open the options page to set a PIN, finish the list and pick the hours you want the lock on. Ctrl+Shift+9 opens the popup from the keyboard, and the shortcut deliberately will not switch the lock off — a hotkey that unlocks is not a lock. Questions people ask Does it work in incognito? Only if you allow the extension in incognito, since Chrome disables extensions there by default. Will it slow down browsing? No. The rules are checked in the network stack, and the extension does no work while you browse. Can I block just part of a site? No. A rule blocks the host, and subdomains are included deliberately. What happens if I forget the PIN? There is no recovery — no server, no account. Remove the extension and the list resets. Does it work on other browsers? It is packaged for Chrome and Chromium-based browsers with Manifest V3 support. Is my list private? It never leaves the profile. The extension contains no network code at all.