Enabling RegEx
- Enter your pattern in the text field
- Check the RegEx box on that entry
- FocusMe will treat the entry as a regular expression instead of a literal string
FocusMe’s RegEx matching is always case-insensitive — you don’t need to add
(?i) to your patterns.Essential Patterns
Word Boundaries
Use\b to match whole words only:
store.steampowered.com
Does not match: upstream.example.com (because “steam” is part of “upstream”)
OR Matching
Use| (pipe) to match any of several options:
Combining Patterns
. is escaped as \. in x\.com because . in RegEx matches any character.
Practical Examples
Block All Gaming Platforms
Block All News Sites
Block YouTube Shorts and Reels
Block All Subdomains of a Domain
example.com, www.example.com, mail.example.com, etc.
RegEx Quick Reference
| Pattern | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
. | Any single character | a.c matches “abc”, “a1c” |
* | Zero or more of preceding | ab*c matches “ac”, “abc”, “abbc” |
+ | One or more of preceding | ab+c matches “abc”, “abbc” but not “ac” |
? | Zero or one of preceding | ab?c matches “ac”, “abc” |
\b | Word boundary | \bcat\b matches “cat” but not “category” |
(a|b) | Either a or b | (cat|dog) matches “cat” or “dog” |
\. | Literal dot | google\.com matches “google.com” |
(?i) | Case insensitive (built-in — not needed in FocusMe) | hello matches “HELLO” automatically |
[a-z] | Character range | [0-9]+ matches one or more digits |
Common Mistakes
- Forgetting the RegEx checkbox — your pattern is treated as plain text
- Unescaped dots —
google.comin RegEx matchesgoogleXcomtoo. Usegoogle\.com - Too broad a pattern —
gameblocksgame.combut alsogamestop.comand any URL with “game” in it. Use word boundaries\bto be precise - Testing — try your pattern on a site like regex101.com before adding it to FocusMe