Doomscroll Blocker

A Chrome extension that stops the spiral and helps you go touch grass — now with an Iron Man–inspired HUD.

Features

• Scroll & Shorts limits — warns you once you scroll too far on a site, or watch too many YouTube Shorts.
• Block any site — keep your own monitored list; defaults include the usual time-sinks.
• Live settings — changes apply to open tabs instantly, no reload needed.
• Heads-up intervention — a full-screen alert that fades the page out, then sends you off to touch grass.
• Private by design — only the storage permission, no tracking, no servers, no remote code, self-hosted fonts.

Screenshots

Development

Built with TypeScript + esbuild (no framework).

pnpm install
pnpm build       # typecheck, bundle to build/, and zip to dist/build.zip
pnpm watch       # rebuild on change (reload the unpacked extension manually)
pnpm typecheck   # tsc --noEmit

Load the unpacked extension from build/ via chrome://extensions (Developer mode → Load unpacked).

• src/ — TypeScript sources (popup, contentScript, background, plus shared constants / types / warning).
• public/ — static assets (manifest.json, popup.html, fonts.css, fonts, icons) copied verbatim to build/.
• scripts/build.mjs — the esbuild build (3 entries → classic IIFE bundles).

Changelog

1.0.7

• Customizable alert message — set your own directive headline (e.g. "Touch Grass") in settings; it applies live to open tabs.
• Release pipeline now triggers on version-tag pushes and auto-creates the GitHub Release with the built .zip attached.

1.0.6

• Master on/off switch — a "System power" toggle in settings to pause all monitoring; the header indicator reflects Online/Offline state.
• Patched ReDoS advisories in transitive dev dependencies (minimatch, brace-expansion) via pnpm overrides.

1.0.5

• Raised the default scroll threshold to 8000px.

1.0.4

• Warning now fires on how far down the page you are, not total distance scrolled — scrolling up and back down no longer triggers it early.

1.0.3

• Detect scrolling inside inner containers (e.g. LinkedIn's feed) so the warning fires on sites that don't scroll the document itself.
• The resolved "directive" screen now uses a calm blue scanline.

1.0.2

• Fix the in-page warning overlay collapsing into a squished vertical column on sites with aggressive global text-wrapping CSS (e.g. Reddit, YouTube).

1.0.1

• Refined the app icon to a circular arc-reactor badge (transparent corners).
• Refreshed Chrome Web Store assets (icon, promo tiles) and added listing copy.

1.0.0

• Complete visual redesign into a dark, Iron Man–style HUD: arc-reactor logo, holographic grid, neon-cyan controls, and a full-screen "threshold exceeded" alert that resolves into a calm "touch grass" directive.
• Rewritten in TypeScript with strict type-checking.
• New build system — replaced webpack with esbuild (sub-100ms builds, one dev dependency).
• Hardened for 2026 MV3 best practices:
  • Fixed a URL-matching bug where a blocked domain could match unrelated sites (now parses the hostname with subdomain awareness).
  • Dropped the tabs permission — the extension now requests only storage.
  • Content script self-initializes and reacts to setting changes live via storage.onChanged (no page reload).
  • YouTube Shorts detection now uses the Navigation API (with a fallback).
  • Self-hosted fonts (no third-party network requests) and an explicit Content Security Policy.
• New arc-reactor app icon.

0.4.1

• Added a settings card so you can save custom scroll distance and YouTube Shorts limits.
• Slowed down the warning flash.

0.4.0

• Added support for YouTube Shorts blocking!
• Added a help button
• Various bug fixes and improvements

0.3.3

• Allow specifying subdomains

0.3.2

• Name update
• Description update

0.3.1

• UI Improvements.

0.3.0

• Major bug fixes involving blocked sites not working on install.
• User Experience Improvements.
• Upgraded vulnerable dependencies.

0.2.1

• Minor bug fixes.

0.2.0

• Major UI/UX Improvements.

0.1.0

• Initial release!

Install

Chrome extension

Contribution

Suggestions and pull requests are welcomed!

https://github.com/jasonzh0/doomscroll-blocker