Step 1 What to block — the Websites tab with a few sites in the block list
Adding a Website
Type into the add row (Type a site to block, e.g. youtube.com…) and press Enter or click Add. After two characters FocusMe suggests matching sites from your recent browsing; sites already in the list are marked Already added. If a site is already on the list you’ll see Duplicate target - this entry already exists in the list. If it’s on the other list, FocusMe tells you (Already on the allow list, which takes priority. or Already on the block list.) and offers Move to block list / Move to allow list.Bulk add websites
Click Bulk add websites… to open the website picker:
The Bulk add websites picker — Recent websites and Paste or import list
Choose a Target Type and Match for the selection, then click Done. The footer shows N selected and a Clear All link. Browser-internal pages (such as
about: or chrome:// URLs) are never offered.
Editing a Row
Click any row to open the inline editor (Click a row to edit its type and match), where you can change its TYPE, VALUE and MATCH.
A row expanded into its inline TYPE / VALUE / MATCH editor
Target Types and Match Types
Each website entry has a target type and a match type.
Addresses are compared with
https://, a leading www. and any trailing / removed, so write entries without them.
The two Contains behaviours are easy to mix up, and which one you get depends only on the entry itself.
reddit.com is a bare domain, so it is matched as a domain and does not block notreddit.com. game has no dot, so it is a substring and blocks gamestop.com as well as game.com. Adding a path turns an entry into a substring test too: reddit.com/r/gaming matches wherever that text appears. If you need a domain boundary on something that is not a bare domain, use a Regex entry such as (^|\.)reddit\. — see Regular Expressions.Partial Blocking
Add a path rather than a domain to block part of a site while allowing the rest:youtube.com/shorts— blocks Shorts but allows normal YouTube videosreddit.com/r/gaming— blocks one subreddit only
Saved Lists
The Lists: row shows FocusMe’s ready-made lists (social media, news, adult content and so on) as chips. Click a chip to load its sites into the current list; click it again to unload them. If a list exists for both websites and applications, FocusMe asks whether to load it on the other tab too.- Save as list — saves the current targets as a reusable list of your own.
- Manage lists… — opens a menu with Save current targets as list…, Import list from file… and Restore defaults (resets the built-in lists to their original content; your own lists are untouched). Each list can also be edited, exported or deleted from here.
Allowed List and Blocking Everything
Click Advanced (allow list, block all, block methods, penalty) to reveal the list role switch and the blocking behaviour options.
Step 1 with the Advanced expander open — the Blocked / Allowed switch, block-all toggle and Blocking behaviour
- The segmented control switches between the Blocked list and the Allowed list. The blocked list takes the name of the rule mode where relevant — for example Limit List on a Time Limit interval — and the counts are shown on each segment. Anything on the allowed list takes priority over the blocked list.
- Tick Block every website except my allowed list to block the whole internet and allow only the sites you add to the allowed list. The tab then shows only the allowed list.
docs.google.com, github.com and stackoverflow.com for a coding session.
When blocking every website, allow any sites you need for signing in (SSO providers, OAuth redirects) or you may lock yourself out of your work tools.
Similarity protection
When you’re viewing the allowed list, a Similarity protection setting (Off / Low / Medium / High) closes the allowed-list loophole: an allowed website must differ enough from every blocked entry, so near copies of blocked sites can’t be waved through. Low rejects only near duplicates of blocked entries, Medium still lets specific pages and single videos through, and High allows only long, very specific links. An allowed-list entry that would be caught by the block list is marked Blocked: and cannot be used.Blocking Behaviour
The Blocking behaviour panel (under Advanced) sets the Block action for websites — what happens when you open a blocked site:
The block page shown when you visit a blocked website
Browser Addon
Website blocking relies on the FocusMe browser addon, which reports the pages you open to the app and applies the block action inside the browser. Install it from Settings > Browsers — only browsers found on your computer are listed, and each button opens the correct install page. If a plan is running and a browser has no addon, FocusMe offers to install it for you. Addon Verification (also in Settings > Browsers) decides what happens when a browser is used without a working addon, from Off through Basic and Standard to Strict, which closes unverified browser tabs until the addon is installed. Learn more about the browser addon →Tips
- Start broad, add exceptions. It’s often easier to block every website and allow what you need than to chase each distracting site individually.
- Use Keyword for stubborn sites. A site that hides behind mirrors, shorteners or embedded players is easier to catch by a word in its title.
- Combine with app blocking. If you block
youtube.combut have a YouTube desktop app installed, block that too — see Blocking Applications. - Use Regex for patterns. Regular Expressions let one entry cover many sites.