Reviews for Monastery
Monastery by Firefox user 12081146
Review by Matthew Brown
Rated 4 out of 5
by Matthew Brown, 7 years agoA handsome, spartan alternative to StayFocusd and LeechBlock. It's not as full-featured as either - most notably, there's no Nuclear Option-like functionality or complex week-based schedule blocking. However, since I only use Firefox every now and then for specialized tasks that Chrome can't do, LeechBlock would be massive overkill, and Monastery is perfectly adequate for me.
It is a bit annoying that I can't block Firefox pages, so there's nothing stopping me from disabling Monastery in moments of particular weakness, but that can be fixed with another add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/public-fox/
P.S. - developer is prompt, polite, and responsive.
It is a bit annoying that I can't block Firefox pages, so there's nothing stopping me from disabling Monastery in moments of particular weakness, but that can be fixed with another add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/public-fox/
P.S. - developer is prompt, polite, and responsive.
Developer response
posted 7 years agoThat's... very strange. I'm rewriting the whole thing as it is rather messy on the inside, but a common problem that a lot of other people faced is that your Firefox isn't permitting Monastery from using the storage feature. Go to about:config and make sure webextensions.storage.sync.enabled is True.
23 reviews
- Rated 1 out of 5by io, 3 years agoI used to love this add-on, of which I'd used an old version on Waterfox until switching back to Firefox recently, and let me tell you: This add-on doesn't seem to do anything anymore. Since having it installed, Ive been just plain locked out of my blacklisted sites altogether. I haven't used my 2 hours of allotted time because I'm never permitted to visit the site in the first place; The timer never starts counting down thus I can't even confirm if the Time Remaining alerts work or not. This is just really a bummer, and I'd love if this add-on could be made to work again.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 12933498, 5 years agoThe promise of this add-on was so tempting. I surveyed other "procrastination" add-ons, and found Monastery's feature set to be the most attractive.
Then I installed it and tried using it.
It just plain doesn't seem to work. The timer doesn't reset each day. The warnings don't pop up. When I *first* installed it, the 30 second "throttling" feature worked, but then it stopped working, counting down to 0, and just ending up stuck. - Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 15218293, 5 years agoThis extension does not have anywhere close to the full functionality of StayFocused. You cannot specify blackout hours, which is what you can do with StayFocused. Rather than setting time limits for sites, you block out entire hours where your blacklisted sites (or ALL sites, using the Nuclear Option) will not work.
The only thing you can do with this extension is set time limits for sites. Disappointing. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 15132751, 5 years ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 14946639, 6 years ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 14949407, 6 years agoThis is my second day. First, I didn't recognize the time "warning" because it was labeled Monastery which I didn't recognize as the name of the app I had installed. So I got locked out abruptly. I went into the settings to edit the amount of time I'm allowed. Now, on day 2 I'm still locked out - pretty sure more than 24 hours went by. But then why should it be a 24 hour thing anyway? I would like the clock to start at 12:00 am for each 24-hour day so I'm not locked out in the morning if I made a change yesterday afternoon. As it is I have no idea when I can get on the site again .... I'm just waiting ... or maybe I'll just uninstall it. I'm sure others have when this happens.
And as others have mentioned it would be nice to dial in a time limit for each blacklisted URL.
UPDATE: Day 3 - still locked out. I don't understand what's happening. I'll wait until tomorrow to decide whether to uninstall. - Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 14536548, 6 years agoI wish I could try to use this. But by default it is set to only one minute, and when I try to change the settings to 15 minutes (what I ideally want), it tells me I can't change the settings for 24 hours. This has happened twice now and I haven't been able to actually get in to save it before it blocks me from changing. A 1 minute default is pretty ridiculous, please change it to something more reasonable so we can actually set it up and use the app.
EDIT: Tried it the next day and I was able to save my 15 minute limit. I then switched to my limited site and it blocked me after 1 minute. USELESS IF YOU CAN'T ACTUALLY ADJUST THE SETTINGS. - Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 14308946, 6 years agoIs this add on still in developpement ? The delay mode dont work for me, it just freeze and block the site for the rest of the day o_O ...But thank you
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 13407204, 6 years agoExactly what I was looking for in a time management addon for Firefox. This is one of the only few that actually blocks sites still after the API switch on the newer versions of Firefox. A huge life saver and a big thanks for the developers for keeping this up to date! However as of right now setting the time limit doesn't make a difference for today (the day of installation) and thus I have 30 seconds. I'll likely have to wait a day to try and get this to work properly. Fingers crossed though.
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 14185391, 6 years agoHaving used StayFocusd I find this app to be very suitable as a Firefox equivalent, but I seem to be encountering a bug. My allotted time for the day does not seem to be renewing itself- I had 2 minutes remaining yesterday, and when I come to browse the following day, or over 24 hours after my last session, 2 minutes is all that remains.
It effectively means that all sites are completely blocked- a bit overkill, so it negates the usefulness of the extension to a large degree, which is a shame, because I can see that if it worked correctly, it would be absolutely ideal. Given the other positive reviews on here, is it possible that I'm the only one this is affecting, and if so, maybe there's a solution? - Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 14111094, 6 years agoWorks fine, but could use some of the bells and whistles from Stayfocsd in Chrome. I'd particularly like a Nuclear option.
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 14096544, 6 years ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 13756304, 7 years agoGreat extension, I've been looking for something like StayFocusd for Firefox for a long time.
However, there is one very annoying bug, that is the 24 hour clock for deciding when the
"new day" starts begins from the installation time, not the computer time. So, I get "You have used up all your time for the day" till around 3 pm. Please fix that. - Rated 5 out of 5by Stefano Cecere, 7 years agonot perfect (options UI seems draft and there isn't a "nuclear" option to close all blacklisted sites by the hours) but does its job. lucky since it seems the only valid addon for Firefox, no there isn't choice :)
i just hope that the background engine doesn't eats any CPU to normal navigation.
love the name "Monastery".. i'd love to see a monk shape when showing the lovely pre-delay page :) - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 13714762, 7 years agoDownloaded it for the second time and it's working perfectly. I like it very much. Thank you.
Developer response
posted 7 years agoWow, that's really concerning. Could you help me to try to figure out why it's breaking? Just go to Tools > Web Developer > Web Console and put "background.js" without the quotes in the "Filter Output" section. Not even being able to open the settings is a pretty extreme bug that I have no idea as to the source of. - Rated 5 out of 5by Duncan McIntosh, 7 years agoSince I installed Monastery, I've spent so much less time on the bad parts of Reddit, and spent more time being productive! It's easily customizable. The only problem I've had is that I had to update my system clock to 2018 and back for it to notice my change in time from 1 minute to 45... but it works great after that. :)
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 13578195, 7 years agoThis has most of the features I want. There's one feature I would like to suggest, though, that StayFocusd has and this doesn't.
I would like if I could block these sites on Monday-Friday, but not the weekend. Or be able to block from 8am-6pm, for example. The time controls were really helpful. - Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 13551633, 7 years agoThe app seems to be a good one, with the functions I need. But there seems to be a huge bug. I wanted to try it with 15 mins first but after a minute, I lost the access and can't seem to change the permitted time even after 24 hours. I am on the verge of disabling the app, unfortunately...
EDIT: It actually works now - almost. I think the 24 h problem was that I was trying to change the setting right after I first lost access after that one minute, so it was actually probably 24 h from the time I last changed the settings, or something similar. Still, I can't seem to change the amount of time even before I run out of time. Right now, I have 1 minute and something left and I feel I still need more time to read some things on Facebook, so I wanted to make it longer, but even though the settings say "saved", the clock still shows the same amount of time.Developer response
posted 7 years agoThis extension works for me for the most part, but I know that it’s got a lot of problems hidden away somewhere. So, my apologies. If I’m understanding correctly, you’re trying to change the time and it still says ‘your time is up for the day,’ correct? Try opening up the browser toolbox and filtering for “background.” Ctrl-Shift-I to open it up, or go under Tools in the menu. There’s a few lines out of a file “background.js” that might give me some information, if you’d be so kind to post it. Hopefully I can get Monastery working for more people. Thanks for giving it a chance. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 13036565, 7 years agoDoes exactly what I need it to. I noticed, though, that the Delay Page settings warn me when I set the delay to 0.1 minutes, saying it needs to be at least 0.5 minutes, but then it works anyway.
Developer response
posted 7 years agoHuh. I... suppose that's a good thing. Maybe I'll remove the minimum time.
Thanks for using and reviewing Monastery! - Rated 3 out of 5by firesux, 7 years agoAdd-on starts at the time you install it, NOT at 4am like the description reads. So my hour countdown I assigned starts at 3pm, and blocked a site this morning even though it is a "new day." Needs to be synced with computer clock, not install time.
Also - would be nice to have a list of multiple sites and time limits to add, not just one field of URLs and one total time limit.
Otherwise, functions as described and is useful.Developer response
posted 7 years agoYour issue is interesting - Monastery just gets the current time and then sets the time to 23:59:59.999 for when the timer resets, so I suspect that the issue lies in timezones. If you feel like helping me out to fix this: Press ctrl-shift-j and then scroll up until you find a comment along the lines of "Hourglass expires [number]" - tell me what time it is wherever you are and what number it is.
As for your feature requests - eventually, I hope to implement those as well. It'd certainly be useful for Youtube watching, at least for me. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 13222763, 7 years agoС тех пор как перешел на работу на дому, появилась необходимость сдерживать отвлекающие факторы, в частности соблазн посещать любимые сайты. Эта штука прекрасно справилась с этой проблемой.