CoolHeaded per ziddyangus

CoolHeaded puts a short, deliberate pause between wanting something and reaching it.

You write the terms while you're calm: why you're installing it, and one question you want your own calm self to ask you later. When you hit a blocked site, you meet your own words, a short wait, and then a choice. The choice is always yours. The point is only that you make it having actually thought about it.

WHAT IT DOES

• Blocks adult sites from a public list, updated daily
• Forces SafeSearch on across search engines — enforced at the address level, so no account setting turns it off
• Blocks the account settings pages on social media sites where adult content can be enabled
• Blocks words and site addresses you add yourself
• A wait before access opens: five minutes minimum, longer if you choose
• Access closes itself again after a short window, so one moment doesn't leave you unprotected for a week
• Backing out costs nothing — cancel any time, no penalty, nothing recorded

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

No accountability partner. Nobody is watching, nobody gets a report, no screenshots are taken.

No streaks and no relapse counters. Nothing resets to zero and tells you that you failed. This is a tool for limiting something, not a programme for quitting it.

No account, no subscription, no server. Everything stays on your computer. No history of blocks or unlocks is kept.

⚠ IMPORTANT: INSTALL IT IN EVERY BROWSER YOU USE

A browser extension only works inside the browser it's installed in. It is not installed on your computer as a whole.

So if you have Chrome and Firefox on the same computer, installing CoolHeaded in Chrome does nothing at all for Firefox. Opening the other browser gets you straight past it.

CoolHeaded is available for both:

• Chrome — and Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi, which can all install from the Chrome Web Store
• Firefox — a separate version, on Firefox Add-ons

Install it in every browser you actually use. Or, simpler and more reliable, uninstall the browsers you don't use — most people have two or three they never opened on purpose.

OPTIONAL: MAKE THE PAUSE HOLD HARDER

CoolHeaded works on its own, and most people will never need this part.

But there are two things no browser extension can do by itself: it can't stop you removing it in two clicks, and it can't stop you opening a private window, which bypasses it entirely.

If you want those closed, there are free setup scripts for Windows and Linux that:

• Stop CoolHeaded being removed or disabled — and only CoolHeaded. Your other extensions carry on working normally.
• Disable private browsing
• Force SafeSearch on at browser level, underneath the extension
• Apply to every browser on the computer at once, and to every user account

They need administrator rights, because that's the only place these settings live. They're published in plain text so you can read exactly what they do before running anything:

https://github.com/Shanaboxer/Coolheaded-scripts

Undoing them is documented too, including a route that needs no code and no waiting.

HONEST LIMITATIONS

• Install it in each browser separately — see above. A browser you skip is a way straight round it.
• Without the optional scripts, it can be removed from the extensions page in two clicks.
• Private browsing bypasses it unless you run those scripts.
• No blocklist is complete. New sites appear daily.
• The scripts are Windows and Linux only. The extension itself works anywhere the browser does.

CoolHeaded works by being in the way at the moment the decision gets made. That's the whole idea.