Urge Guard Autor: OG

What is Urge Guard?

Urge Guard isn't a harsh site blocker — it's a self-awareness tool. When you visit a site you want to be mindful about, it introduces a brief pause and asks you to reflect on what you're feeling. Then it lets you continue.

Over time, you build a picture of why you reach for distractions — not just that you do.

How it works

1. Add sites you want to be mindful about (e.g., reddit.com, twitter.com)
2. When you visit one, a countdown page appears (default 20 seconds)
3. During the pause, identify what you're feeling — boredom? avoidance? fatigue?
4. After the timer, continue to the site if you still want to
5. Your visit duration is tracked so you can see how much time you actually spend

Features

Emotion tracking
Choose from 7 emotion categories (avoidance, fear, boredom, frustration, fatigue, shame, freeze), each with nuanced sub-options. Rate your intensity on a 1-10 scale and add a note about what you were doing.

Visit duration tracking
See how long you actually spend on sites after completing the countdown. Visits are tracked per-tab and end automatically when you switch away.

48-hour activity feed
A unified timeline showing both your urges and site visits from the last two days.

Weekly insights
Discover patterns in your browsing habits:
- Which emotions drive your urges most often
- Which sites you're drawn to the most
- Your average urge intensity
- Total time spent per site with daily averages

Flexible site patterns
Use wildcards, exceptions, and comments in your site list:
- reddit.com — blocks the entire domain including subdomains
- +reddit.com/r/programming — allows specific paths as exceptions
- # work distractions — add comments to organize your list

Configurable
- Countdown duration (5-300 seconds)
- Allowed browse window before re-prompting (1-30 minutes)
- Auto-load site after countdown
- Cancel countdown if you switch away

Privacy

Urge Guard stores everything locally in your browser. No accounts, no servers, no analytics, no data ever leaves your device. Clear your data anytime from the settings page.

Open source

Urge Guard is free and open source. View the code, report issues, or contribute on GitHub.