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Comment by huhkerrf | Hacker News Reader

Not surprising that a magazine that has been called a $12,000 espresso machine turned into a periodical only mentions iPhone apps, but if you're an Android, there are also a lot of good apps for this.

For locking you out of apps based on time, location, or usage, Lock Me Out is really good. You can get most of what you need out of it without paying anything, which can't be said for a lot of the others. (Am I really going to pay a subscription for this? Yuck.)

I couple it with Olauncher, which also doesn't need a subscription.

I'm not affiliated with either, but just those that have worked well for me.

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I use blocksite to help with avoiding the mobile browser versions of these services as well. another one where you can get most of what you need for free and while of course you can always undo something you did the extra few seconds it takes to unblock facebook is often time enough for me to determine whether I'm actually using it for a purpose or dopamine regulating.

Thank you. Are there any equivalent analogues for desktop browser doom scrolling?

Leechblock NG [1] allows you to block sites on a schedule or add time limits.

[1] https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/

This is somewhat tangential, but related: if you are savvy enough to setup some self-hosted apps, I have used FreshRSS (along with some related extensions/plugins) to great effect in an effort to remove the direct influence of algorithms and endless scrolling.

With some tweaks, I can even use it to maintain subscriptions to YouTube channels and social media feeds. It’s maybe a subtle distinction, but I feel like having a very prosaic, chronological list of posts/articles/videos promotes healthier habits for consuming them.

Create a separate, non-admin user account that is controled by any parental control apps, parental proxy filters etc. and use that one for work or during leisure time. You can then time-lock your admin- or parental control password using an online time lock service such as lockmeout.online or other solutions.

if you're on a mac or linux you can always edit /etc/hosts to redirect traffic to localhost, effectively killing the site on your local machine

for MacOs https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol

This barely works for me because it seems like stuff always gets cached either at the browser or the OS level.

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts ditto.

https://freedom.to/ Works everywhere for me.

I switched to Lock Me Out recently, much better than the others I've tried.

I just looked through it and noticed that one of the options for unlocking access is paying Lock Me Out an amount of money that you configure. So like "to help myself with my Reddit addiction, I'll pay $5 every time I open Reddit."

Now THERE's a business model. Hot damn.

That's amazing lol, great idea

> Am I really going to pay a subscription for this?

You pay a subscription to kill your subscriptions whilst your in queue for your subscriptions to get more for your addictions...

If your smart enough to ask no. If your not gullible enough to have your action taken from you, no. If you're too childish to believe a habit is an addiction yes, if you're too stupid to know the difference yes, and if you're a fool you'll simply pay for the pro plus version.

I believe Opal is coming to Android.

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