Focus Shield

A small macOS menu bar app that blocks YouTube, Netflix, X, Instagram, LinkedIn and Prime Video in Chrome and Safari. To pause it, you first read three facts about attention (from Jonathan Haidt, Johann Hari, Cal Newport, Gloria Mark and others), then choose 30 minutes or 1 hour. The shield turns itself back on afterwards. While paused, you can extend the pause by 30 minutes from the menu.

Download: https://shieldfocus.app

How it works

The app checks the web address of each open Chrome and Safari tab about once a second, using Apple Events. Tabs on a blocked site are redirected to a local "Focus Shield is on" page. Nothing about your browsing is stored or sent anywhere. The only network request is a daily Sparkle update check against https://shieldfocus.app/appcast.xml.

Releasing

1. Bump CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion in Resources/Info.plist.
2. Write release-notes/<version>.md (one - bullet per line).
3. ./release.sh builds, signs, notarizes and writes the update feed.
4. ./publish.sh creates the GitHub release, then pushes the feed so installed copies update.

Building

Requires Xcode command-line tools (Swift 5.9+), macOS 13+.

./build.sh             # ad-hoc signed build in ./build
./build.sh --install   # also copies to /Applications and launches
./release.sh           # Developer ID signed, notarized .dmg in ./dist (see script header for setup)

• Blocked sites: Sources/ShieldState.swift
• Facts: Sources/Facts.swift
• Website: docs/index.html (served by GitHub Pages)