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A lot of the most useful software I've made for myself has been browser extensions.

Spend too much time on Hacker News? I made an extension to freeze the front page so it updates once every 6 hours.

Spend too much time on Reddit? I made an extension requiring a password to be input for every page I visit.

Want to extensively filter LinkedIn jobs, and track which jobs you've applied to? I made an extension to apply very specific filtering to LinkedIn job postings, and to track my application status.

I do wish the Chrome extension API wasn't so annoying to use. Each time I make an extension I sort of dread the process since it's not a good developer experience, but I always find the result to be very useful in my day-to-day life.

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There's a good chance a lot of these plug-ins could be vastly simplified and just written as user scripts in Tampermonkey, so you might want to look into that.

I don't want to have to do that though. To use a car analogy, don't give me an autoshop/factory filled with tools and machines and metal and plastic, I want to be able to just buy the truck.

> I do wish the Chrome extension API wasn't so annoying to use. Each time I make an extension I sort of dread the process since it's not a good developer experience, but I always find the result to be very useful in my day-to-day life.

Sounds like the making of a good lifestyle SaaS product.

can you elaborate?

I’d love to see how these things are architected. Do you have them on GitHub? Are there any boilerplates or anything you recommend to get started?

MDN and Chrome does are mediocre yet do have reasonable starting points. Main bits are background vs content script(s), event listeners, and promises.

A long time ago, I put together this writeup of an extension I made. It's a bit old, and I rewrote the extension since, but the bones are still pretty similar:

https://bpev.me/blog/favioli/

FWIW, HN has settings to limit how much time you spend here.

I do use it for other sites as well, like news sites. You can freeze any site for a specified period of time. It definitely makes me use the sites less frequently.

I love this idea of making your own. I wanted to create one that types the text I highlight like a type writer. Will have to try it now. Thanks.

Isn't it easier to do those via User scripts?

> Spend too much time on Hacker News? I made an extension to freeze the front page so it updates once every 6 hours.

Me, I just open a guest account, or a new profile, etc. Meaning, the extension is at most a reminder to try to stop. it's still trivial to bypass

> the extension is at most a reminder to try to stop. it's still trivial to bypass

Well, of course. You can also disable the extension, but that's not the point.

I agree with who you're replying to. A blocker is no blocker if it is trivial to disable.

It is about blocking yourself so the routine is interrupted. Suddenly it is no one click routine action anymore, but you take make the decision to bypass a conscious decision of the brain. At that point you can decide to stop and go back to your actual work and thus break the habit of ope ing that page too often.

Executive function tools: not an exact substitute for executive function capabilities. ;)

All it needs to do is pattern interrupt strongly enough that you're not sucked into the social media black hole for hours.

A bypass for 15 minutes button might be too weak, but a small math problem or a password you need to get from your manager would be enough friction.

The decision to bypass after being interrupted is with you, and that's ok.

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