Beautifully interrupts mindless browsing, and gets you back to your life.
Entirely in your control.
You specify which sites you'd like to be mindful about your time on, and provide a list of things you'd generally rather do instead.
Mindful Browsing doesn't block you from visiting sites - it simply asks if you'd like to visit, and if so, reminds you 10 minutes later.
Beautiful.
Mindful Browsing features stunning photographs from some of the world's best landscape photographers. If you're a photographer and are interested in having your work featured, email [email protected].
Free. Open. Safe.
Mindful Browsing was built by me, Steven Skoczen, to help with my own mindless browsing. Friends liked it, so I made it available for free on the chrome store.
Mindful Browsing doesn't track any of your activity, and the code is open-source so that you (or a geeky friend) can verify nothing sneaky is going on.
I hope you Mindful Browsing makes your life a bit better. If you have ideas, I'd love to hear from you.
Note: If you're looking for a way to block sites entirely, there are a host of other extensions out there. Do a search for stay focused, or block site, or study blocker. A lot of people have built ways to completely block sites for a period of time. Mindful Browsing isn't one of them - we believe that it's better to learn to be mindful about browsing than relying on a computer to enforce it. Think of it this way: if you hurt your leg, in the long run, would you rather do rehab and build your muscles, or use crutches for the rest of your life? :)
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Version 1.2.6
- Updates to Chrome Extension V3 permissions. This means the extension no longer needs the tabs or webNavigation permissions. Hooray for fewer permissions!
Version 1.2.4
- Adds new images.
Version 1.2.2:
- Updates all images to SSL, so no warning appears on secured sites.
Version 1.2.1:
- Fixed a bug that was causing images not to load.
Version 1.2:
- Lots of new images, now changing daily
- Hides the confirmation for small popups (like Facebook and Twitter's "Authorize this app" screens.)
- Saves the daily image locally, for much faster and prettier responses.
- A few odds and ends, like better fonts support, some tweaked spacing, and other beauties.
Version 1.1:
- Fixes a couple bugs, including close button and empty lists.
- Makes edit popup easier to read.
- Even better credit of the incredible photographers we feature.
Version 1.0:
- Initial release.
Latest reviews
- (2023-06-19) redacted: nothing against the extension but hate the idea of relying on external factor to control your impulses or conditioning
- (2023-05-21) Asha Kartha: easy to use and super helpful. i'm glad this exists
- (2023-01-12) Juan José Flórez Muñoz: The idea is great... the execution... not so much. I cannot make it work at all for some reason. When I add the pages and the things I'd rather do, these keep getting deleted, and it doesn't work at all. Hope it gets fixed as this extension seemed perfect for my use case. I'm using brave browser with default settings for privacy.
- (2021-09-10) CL W: Would be nice if there was some way to only have the blocker active during certain times of the day, so that outside of work hours I could use my browser freely. But for a free extension, this is super useful.
- (2021-07-13) Niranjana Arul: Very simple to use, keeps me away from distracting apps, can also be used to prompt what to do instead of getting distracted. Love this extension!!!
- (2020-08-19) Lenny: Lovely concept and works well, I wish we can adjust the amount of time we can spend on a website, and be able to turn on and off the extension whenever we need to. Maybe have it prompt us to input a duration between 1-10 minutes so that we can think about how long we wanna spend on it, and after that amount of time we get asked to go back to work. :) Sometimes it 'remembers' URLs that I've asked it to remove. Which is a bother, since we can't even turn off the extension for a period of time.
- (2020-07-20) Xico Caio: It is the type of self-control tool I wanted, simple and not annoying. However, it takes to long to block the website, and it is not instantaneous as some other extensions. Also, the motivation placeholder web page could be more open to customization, as the motivation sentence is on a small font and with a transparency that makes it difficult to read.
- (2020-02-08) Dmitrii Kotov: It doesn't work. I added some sites and nothing happend.
- (2019-12-22) Cyphen A Y: simple, very useful
- (2019-12-13) Lori A: I love it. Works great. Beautiful pictures but I can only see one background. It doesn't change to the others shown in the app store.
- (2019-09-10) Sarah Mac: This is a beautiful extension, and is actually terrifically helpful. My only problem is that both the lists tend to delete items or replace them with duplicates, which is not ideal when you suddenly check the clock and wonder why it hasn't flagged the website for half an hour. I've found that adding one. option. at. a. time. keeps them on for a short period of time, but eventually they get mucked up again. This is admittedly beautifully simple, but I also second some of the comments that it would benefit greatly from having an on/off option, and a way to control the time limit.
- (2019-08-09) Jessica Avalon: brilliant.
- (2019-05-16) Dottie Blyth: great idea, but photo and text/button contrast makes it hard to read.
- (2019-03-23) Fahad ALMOutiri: https://blog.twitter.com/marketing/en_us.html
- (2019-02-12) Ananth: This is an excellent extension. It gently makes you question yourself if what you're doing is the best use of your time before getting sucked into your old habits. Highly recommended.
- (2019-01-20) Marti Sleister: This is a great extension. It helps me keep in mind how much time I'm wasting as I do it. It leaves me to decide whether to get back to it or not. I wish I could turn it off outside of work hours and on days off. I'm allowed to goof off on Saturday morning.
- (2018-06-19) Dianne DeSha: Sadly, I spoke too soon. After closing down and reopening Chrome, it has duplicated everything from the fourth entry down (erasing every other URL I put in) and does this even after restarts and reinstalls. --so I'd have to call it broken at this point. Such a shame!) ======================= It works nicely--I don't want to be forced off a page like many extensions do, I just want to be reminded that I'm getting distracted. This does it nicely. Two requests: 1) I second the option to have a shorter time limit on the reminder--5 or even 3 minutes. 2)An option on the button to turn it on and off, for those times when I'm actually doing something important on one of those inbetween sites--amazon, for instance--that can sometimes be necessary and sometimes just be a distraction. The first is more important to me--10 minutes is too much time to wander off mentally. But this is a beautiful, well-crafted reminder (not force-block!) system. :-)
- (2017-10-31) Julie A. H.: I use to much time doing nothing on sites like facebook and youtube, so I need an app like this. Unlike other extensions like this, I really like that it reminds you what you ACTUALLY want to do as well as the images. The images doesn't always change though, which I wish they did. The last 10 times it has just been the same picture of a plant. I also wish the "Actually, nah" would close the tab or for there to be an option to go to a different site maybe.
- (2017-08-29) วิชัย ดำรงเดชะธรรม: gods goods goods
- (2017-08-15) Lynn K (Полина Ханова): I love this extension, exactly what I was looking for! I love that it doesn't flat out lock me out of a website but gives me an option to do something else instead. Simple and great. One thing, though: the background pictures are, frankly, cheesy and annoying. Can you please make a simpler version without pictures or add a toggle to turn them off?
- (2017-07-18) daruoosh pj: ok
- (2017-07-04) Saddikul Sk: love
- (2017-05-23) Sarah Campbell: I love it but 10 minutes is TOO LONG!!! I wish there were an option to set the timer for something shorter. It would be awesome if you awesome creators would give us this option! Like 3 minutes. Ten minutes on Facebook adds up fast for me. I have to often check things on Facebook for work. . then I waste at least ten minutes!
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- (2017-02-18) Hasan B. Kartal: Beautiful idea, but there are some bugs in the app! Some clicks on buttons maybe unresponsive and things I have added for "rather to do.." list are being deleted or replaced with something else which I did not typed. Will still keep using it, hope to see more improvement. Thanks!
- (2016-05-16) Exactly what i was looking for! This extension reminds you to do things you love instead of browsing which only drains your happiness in the long run. So next time you'll try to go to facebook and "Like" your friends boring photos, you'll have a second chance to draw, play an instrument, learn a language or write a book.
- (2016-04-25) Shawn O'Neil: I love the gentle (beautiful) nudge to get off FB. However, sometimes it deletes some of my "i'd rather" options...
- (2015-12-02) Joyce Njambi: does exactly as it states.. and gives you that nudge to do something else.. like take a walk or a glass of water, rather than keeping eyes glued to the screen..
- (2015-06-30) Honza Kohout: Great, very nice! I use in combination with Crackbook. This for google.cz, Crackbook for facebook, youtube, news...
- (2015-03-29) David Brown: I like it. It's pretty.
- (2014-12-14) Xiaoming Chen: rescue me from distracting site gently (you can keep browsing if you really want to). It won't actually close until you click "Nah". which means you won't lose your comments not yet submitted.
- (2014-07-06) Brandon Curtis: Set it up in seconds, and it'll give you that gentle nudge you need to stay more focused. Great app!