[Update Oct 12 2018] : Thank you for using Chrome Nanny. It is not available in the app store. It uses an old version of the Chrome extension API/manifest. Unfortunately, I do not have time to update it. Please consider other alternative extensions. Thanks!
[Update Nov 15 2011] : Chrome Nanny is now Nanny for Google Chrome. It also has a new home. The link to Google Chrome extension gallery ishttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cljcgchbnolheggdgaeclffeagnnmhno . Please spread the word !
Prelude :
I have written a Chrome extension which kinda does some very basic stuff that Leech Block does for Firefox. I also have added some more features (like tags, charts) to Chrome Nanny that makes it more usable IMHO. If you are interested in checking it out, check the Chrome Nanny’s entry in Google Chrome extension gallery.
When I published the extension , the site asked for a web page with instructions for the extension . Even though , I had included instructions in options page of the extension, it makes sense to have the instructions in a website too . Hence this post !
[Update]
1. The features that are planned to implemented are listed at the page Chrome Nanny Road Map .
2. This post will be updated as and when new versions of Chrome Nanny are released.
I have put the most commonly asked questions in the FAQ. Please take a look at the FAQ and the comments to see if your issue is addressed. If not please feel free to comment on the post or Chrome Nanny’s extension page.
FAQ
I have added some FAQs based on the comments in the blog post. I will keep them updated as the comments evolve.
1. How do I block a URL (eg : http://www.facebook.com) for a specific period of time ?
Lets say you want to block facebook between 9AM-5PM. Go to Chrome Nanny’s Options page and select Blocked List tab. Enter facebook.com in the URL. Convert time to be blocked to hhmm format in military time. It becomes 0900-1700. If there are multiple times, then append them with commas. Eg 0900-1200,1300-1700. Select the days on which facebook has to be blocked. Click “Save URL”.
2. How do I limit accessing facebook to 1 hour a day ?
Suppose you want to access facebook all day but want to limit it to 1 hour at the most in a day. Go to Chrome Nanny’s Options page and select Blocked List tab. Enter facebook.com in the URL. Enter 0000-0000 in the Blocked Time. Enter 60 in the “Max Time In a Day”. Click “Save URL”.
3. How do I block a url for specific interval but also want to limit the time spent on it in a day ?
This is achieved by a combination of 1 and 2. Lets say you want to block facebook between 9AM-5PM. In the remaining time you want to limit your browsing to 1 hour. To do that, enter facebook.com in the blocked URL , block time as 0900-1700, max time in a day as 60.
4. How do I block all .org sites except wikipedia ?
This can be done using regexp. In the block url , enter .*.org as the url. Enter the appropriate block times and save the blockset. Now go to “White List” tab and enter “wikipedia.org” as white listed url. Chrome Nanny will block all .org sites except wikipedia.
5. Is http, https, www needed ?
No. They are really not needed and Chrome Nanny internally strips them when doing the matching. So facebook.com will block facebook and there is no need to enter the full URL as http://www.facebook.com .
6. Chrome Nanny Crashed my Chrome
Open Chrome Nanny’s options page. In the “General Options” tab, check the value of “Mode of Blocking”. If it is remove (default) then Chrome Nanny will close the tab if you try to access a blocked URL or if your daily quota is up. If there is a single tab in the window, it might look Chrome has crashed. It has not.
7. Chrome Nanny closed my tab
Chrome Nanny’s default mode of blocking is to remove the offending tab. If you want to redirect to some motivational web page, you can certainly do so. Open Chrome Nanny’s options page. In the “General Options” tab, select “Redirect” as the value for “Mode of Blocking”. Enter the redirect url. Note that you cannot redirect to a URL that is blocked.
8. Chrome Nanny did not block my page
There are multiple possible reasons for this scenario.
Case 1: Check if the settings are correct. Is Chrome Nanny disabled ? Are you in Incognito mode ? Obvious, but it does not hurt to say again. Should this URL should be blocked now ? You can click on Chrome Nanny’s popup icon to get more details on which URLs are blocked now.
Case 2 : Is the blocked URL a substring of the tab’s current URL ? For eg having facebook.com will block http://www.facebook.com/home.php , http://www.facebook.com/settings.php and so on. For some websites, the URL with which we access may not be the final URL. Eg reader.google.com may not work. Enter blocked url as google.com/reader. Enter mail.google.com instead of gmail.com and login.live.com instead of hotmail.com and so on.
Case 3 : Check if blocked list and white list URLs clash.
White listed URLs take precedence and if a URL matches white list and block list then it is allowed. A sample scenario is to block Google reader but allow all other google pages. To do this entering google.com/reader in blocked list is enough. If you add google.com in white list , then Google Reader is also allowed as it matches the white listed URL “google.com” .
Case 4 : Check if any of your blocked or white listed URLs using regular expressions (eg using “*” in the URL). If so, validate it in “Validate Regular Expressions” tab. Note that an error in any of the regexp URLs can cause Chrome Nanny to not block other URLs.
Case 5 : Click on Chrome Nanny’s popup icon (the one that looks like a clock). Check if the URL is blocked now. If it is , then Chrome Nanny will block the URL sooner or later. Chrome Nanny uses callback functions of Chrome’s events to perform the blocking. If they are not called , Chrome Nanny might not block the tab immediately .
Don’t worry : Chrome Nanny has other checks too ! It checks all the tabs every minute and blocks tabs if necessary. Also if you switch to another tab or refresh the tab , the tab is checked again. So if Chrome Nanny does not block it immediately then give it some time. If the tab is not blocked even after one minute (Although, Chrome Nanny’s popup says otherwise) then please check the troubleshooting section to see how to contact the developer about the error.
9. Chrome Nanny blocked my page before the deadline is up !
Chrome Nanny has a feature which allows you to specify total time you can spend on all blocked URLs in a day. Suppose you set it to 60 minutes. Then if the total time you have spent on all blocked URLs exceed 60 minutes, then all blocked URLs will be blocked immediately, even though individual URLs may have some more time left. ie This feature overrides the individual URL settings. To disable this feature , set Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs to 0 in General Options tab.
10. Can I block a subdomain or a specific url ?
Sure. For eg, if you want to block Google Reader alone (but not other google pages) enter google.com/reader in the blocked list. This will allow all Google pages but will block Google Reader.
11. Can I block certain patterns of URLs ?
A sample scenario is this : I want to block all Google searches for games but other queries are ok. Yes, you can do it by having a blocked URL as “google.com/search.*games” .
12. Some examples for regular expressions
Please note that you need to use “.*” whenever you want to use “*” in the regular expression. (Eg .*.wordpress.com instead of *.wordpress.com )
a) google.*
Matches google.com , google.co.in, google.com/reader , picasaweb.google.com
Does not match any URL that does not have the word google in it.
b) http://www.google.*/reader
Note : Chrome Nanny internally strips http,https and www. So this regexp is equivalent to google.*/reader
Matches http://www.google.com/reader/view
Does not match google.com, google.co.in, picasaweb.google.com, reader.google.com
c) *.wordpress.com
Does not match anything. Worse yet, it can prevent validtion of other blocked URLs. If you verify this URL , you get an error “Invalid regular expression: /*.wordpress.com/: Nothing to repeat”. This is because , the “*” operation needs some character to repeat and when you dont give any, it errors out.
d) .*.wordpress.com
Correct way to block all wordpress.com blogs. Here the “.*” matches any characters that come before the domain and hence it will block all of them. If you want to allow say, “saravananthirumuruganathan.wordpress.com” but block other wordpress blogs, then create a “.*wordpress.com” blocked URL and make “saravananthirumuruganathan.wordpress.com” as a whitelisted URL.
e) test
This will match any URL that contains the word test. For eg test.com, blahtest.com, foo.com/test , bar.com/g.php?val=test etc.
13. I do not want the Challenge that occurs when I try to edit/delete a blockset when it is blocked !
The 64 character (default) challenge that Chrome Nanny raises when you try to edit/delete a blockset when it is currently blocked is one of the few hurdles in your way before you start whiling away your time ! I do understand there are many “legal” scenarios like experimenting with Chrome Nanny when challenge is an annoyance. So use the following feature only when needed. Go to General Options and then Length Of Challenge Text . Reduce the length 0. To prevent abuse, Chrome Nanny will ask for challenge once. If the length is changed to 0, then further changes do result in a challenge. Once you are done with the playing around, please do increase the challenge text length.
14. I do not want the blocked URLs to be displayed in the popup !
By default, Chrome Nanny will show the URLs currently blocked, how much time left in other blocked URLs and other details. If you do not want it to be displayed in the icon popup, go to Options , click ‘General Options’ tab, and select ‘No’ for the field ‘Show blocked URLs in popup ?’ . After this, when you click on the Chrome Nanny icon, it will display a bland message instead of the blocked URL details.
15. I think I have found a new bug ! Or How do I troubleshoot Chrome Nanny ?
I have tested Chrome Nanny extensively but bugs do creep up. Please check if you can reproduce the error consistently. If so, please point out the bug and the steps to reproduce in any of the following ways : comment at Chrome Nanny’s extension page OR comment in Chrome Nanny’s instructions blog post OR email the developer at saravanan DOT thirumuruganathan AT gmail DOT com .
It would be great if you can email the settings of Chrome Nanny also. Easiest way is to email the file chrome-extension_gpdgmmdbbbchchonpfanphofpplhmcmn_0.localstorage at ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Local Storage (If using Linux and Chrome) or ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Local Storage (using Linux and Chromium) or at C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage (In Windows) .
Optionally you can also give me the logs when the bug occurs. To get Chrome Nanny’s logs , click on the Wrench icon – Select Extensions. Go to Chrome Nanny and click on “background.html” . This will open Chrome’s developer tools. Now try reproducing the bug and copy the log it generates. This will be very helpful for additional debugging.
16. I have a patch for feature X . How do I send it to you ?
It is wonderful that you took time to write a patch. Please send an email to saravananDOTthirumuruganathanATgmailDOTcom with the patch details and the file. I will test it and apply it to the extension. The latest code of Chrome Nanny will can be downloaded from the repository here . If you need additional help on the code please take a look at my post “How to Read the Source Code of Chrome and Firefox Extensions” .
Instructions
First of all, Thanks for using Chrome Nanny !
Chrome Nanny is a Chrome extension which can keep your browsing habits in check. Do you spend more time on facebook than on work ? Do you spend time more time in Google Reader or Digg and later wish you had not spent as much time ? Do you want to know how much you spent on Flick ? If so , Chrome Nanny is for you. Using Chrome Nanny, you can limit yourself from going to some sites on pre determined times or limit the time you spend on some sites. If you do not want to block a site, but want to know how much time you spend there, Chrome Nanny can do that for you too ! If you have used Leech Block for Firefox , you can recognize that Chrome Nanny does something similar but with a twist.
Note : If you are in Google Chrome version 5 or more , then enable this extension to run in Incognito mode too! Chrome Nanny will not like it if you visit blocked sites in Incognito mode. Will she ?
General Options
Mode Of Blocking decides what to do if you are visiting a website during blocked hours or after exhausting all the time you allocated yourself for the site. The default option is to remove the tab which may not be ideal for you. If you want the tab to be redirected to some motivational sites then you can select the redirect option and give a redirect url. You can specify a web page or a local html page (using file:// prefix) . Note that if you have only one tab, mode of block is”remove” and the url is blocked now, the entire window will be closed.
Stop Timer after Chrome is inactive for x minutes – Chrome does not notify when you minimize a Window/Tab. Chrome Nanny does not want you to lose the minutes you were not at the desk. You can enter some number in this field. For eg, if you are not active for 5 minutes, then Chrome Nanny will stop tracking the minutes till you come back.
Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs – Use this field if you want to set a single limit to the time you spend on Blocked URLs. This value will override the individual Blocked URL limits. As an example , lets say you added facebook.com to Blocked URL list and set Max Time In a day as 60 minutes. If you now set, Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs as 30 minutes, then facebook.com will not be accessible after 30 minutes . The same holds when you have multiple Blocked URLs. If the sum of time spent on all the URLs exceed this field, then all Blocked URLs will be blocked.
Length Of Challenge Text – This determines the length of the Challenge text that Chrome Nanny will ask if you try to edit/delete a blockset when it is currently blocked. Reducing this field will also decrease the length of the challenge text. This field was added because in “some” scenarios (eg when playing with Chrome Nanny) , Challenges are an annoyance. Please use this field with discretion. To make changing this field a little hard to use, when you reduce the length of the Challenge, Chrome Nanny will perform a Challenge. So if you try to reduce a 64 character challenge to 32 character, you will be challenged with a 64 character random string before being allowed to change it. Making the length as 0, removes all challenges.
Tags
Tags are a way to aggregate individual URL statistics. For eg you may spend lot of time on nytimes.com and Google news. If you want to aggregate the results into a “news” tag, then you can use the Tags tab for it. An url can belong to multiple tags.
Blocked URLs
Do you think, you spend too much time on Facebook ? This is the tab where you can use to limit your visits.
Block Set Name : Chrome Nanny allows you to group multiple URLs into a block set. Enter a name that you think summarizes the list of URLs. Eg News, Social Networks, Blogs etc.
URLs : Add the websites in this block set here. You need not add a full site url. So facebook.com will be enough. No need to add the whole “http://www.facebook.com”. Note that the url must be the “final” URL of the page that you want to be blocked. This means that gmail.com is better written as mail.google.com , reader.google.com is better written as google.com/reader and so on. You can add as many URLs you want in the text area. Separate them by newline (Enter key). ie a.com enter b.com blocks both a.com and b.com.
Add Tag : If you add any tags in the Tags tab, then you will see those tags here. You can add any number of tags for the url here. Just select the tag and keep clicking “Add Tag”. A URL can have multiple tags.
Block Time : This is the most important information. This decides when the url should be blocked. So if you want it to be blocked from 9 AM to 5 PM, then you encode it as 0900-1700. This is nothing but expressing start and end time as hhmm-hhmm in the 24 hour format. You can add multiple time blocks by separating them by comma. So to block between 9AM-5PM and 7PM-9PM, you write 0900-1700,1900-2100. Note that during the time a URL is blocked, you will not be able to edit or delete the URL.
Max Time : This an optional field. If you want to limit the time you spend on a site during your allowed time, then this field is useful. For eg, taking the example above, if you want to block between 9AM-5PM but you want to limit your browsing to 1 hour in the allowed time (12 AM-8:59 AM , 5:01 PM-11:59 PM) then you enter 0900-1700 in Block Time and 60 in the Max Time In A Day.
Apply On Days : Chrome Nanny understands that you may want to relax on weekends. So if you want your strict rules to apply only on weekdays, uncheck the weekends here.
This field also allows you to specify the block time in a granular level. For eg, you can set yourself to be allowed to browse the site for a maximum of 10 minutes each hour. To do that, set max time as 10 and in the drop down select for every “1 hour’”.
Note that you can edit or delete all the URLs any time when it is not blocked.
Lock Down
Lock down tab allows you to go into a focus mode by blocking some web pages for next “n” minutes. To do that, select the list of blocksets and then set the time to lock down. Note that once a lock down is active, you cannot edit or delete the blockset. Additionally, there is no way to cancel a lockdown too.
The lockdown information is visible in popup and also in the ‘Lockdown Information’ block.
White Listed URLs
If you do not want to block a URL but want to find how much time you spend each day, then use the White Listed URLs tab. Any URL added here is not blocked, but will be tracked and can be charted.
URL : Enter the URL of the site you want to be tracked. Again, you can enter just the domain name to track any page in the site.
Add Tag : As with Blocked URLs , you can add tags to White Listed URLs too !
Statistics
If you want to visualize how you spent your days with respect to the URLs you entered in Chrome Nanny, then this is the tab for you. You can enter the date range and Chrome Nanny will give you four charts. One each for Blocked URLs, Block Sets, White Listed URLs and tags. You can select between Bar Chart and Pie Chart !.
Validate Regular Expression
If you are going to use a regular expression in the URL, then you can use this tab to validate it. A bad regexp can cause syntax error in the code and *might* cause Chrome Nanny not to block other URLs.
Validating a Regular Expression : Enter your regexp in “Regular Expression for URL” and click “Test Regular Expression”. Check the field “RegExp Error”. If there is any error in regexp, it will be displayed here.
Verify if an URL is blocked : Enter the regexp in “Regular Expression for URL” . Enter URL to be tested in “Test URL”. Click “Test Regular Expression”. Check the fields “RegExp Error” and “Match”.
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[…] If you want to check out the extension, please try it out at Chrome Nanny‘s Google extension gallery. If you want to read the instructions and its features, check out Instructions at Chrome Nanny – A Leech Block like extension for Chrome. […]
Hey I created a block set and now need it deleted but it will not allow me to edit nor delete it. I click on the two buttons and nothing happens. I have two block sets and can edit and delete the second one but can not delete or edit the undesired first one. I could not delete or edit the first one even before the second block set was created. Please help! Thanks!
i have the same exact problem!
This problem still persists in April 2013. I just had to uninstall the extension and reinstall it and create block sets from scratch because the first of my two sets could not be edited or deleted, as you point out.
This problem, still persists as of today.
No issues on my mac, but issue occured on my pc. Had to delete and re-install
How do I access the options? All I have is the clock icon in the top corner?
I had the same question and I figured it out. I definitely have more computer knowledge than the average person, but this was *not* intuitive. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for this extension.
So, in Chrome, go to Window at the top, then Extensions. It’ll open a tab with a list of your extensions. Click Options under Nanny, and there will be the place to enter the URLs and times and such.
I have this problem as well. Is this an isolated problem, or just a few of us?
Hi–have been trying to edit my blocks & the 64 digit code. I’ve put it in exactly (double and triple checked) several times. It still says that it is incorrect and won\’t let me edit or delete. Until I can edit/delete my blocks or that code I won\’t be using the product. Too much of a hassle.
its not letting me type in a url. how do i set this up? this is how far ive gotten: i cant click on the clock icon and i see the graph of blocksets and urls but when i click on typing in websites/urls to block it wont let me. plz help!!
IM TERRIBLE AT COMPUTERS SO YOULL REALLY HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT FOR ME SORRY 🙂
Extensions can be easily enabled and disabled, thus Extensions like Chrome Nanny and other website blocker can be easily be bypassed. Hence the question: is there any way to completely enable an extension so that disabling it will not work (or be extremely hard)???
Chrome Version (type about:version into your omnibox): 31.0.1650.63 (Official Build 238485) m
Operating System (Windows 7/8/Vista/XP, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS): Windows 8
Extensions (type Chrome:extensions into your omnibox): Nanny for Google Chrome (TM)
Hi
How do you fix the total time spent in a web site without having a specific block time?
suresh
If I understand your question correctly, you want to limit the time spent on a site to say 1 hour in a day but do not want to have a specific block time. One possible work around is to use a small block time like 0000-0001 and have a max time a day of 60 minutes. In this scenario, the system will block during 1 minute in a day and allows a maximum of 1 hour in the day !.
Hope you find it useful !
yea, i did the same thing basically….thanks for responding…
suresh
how do you unblock??????????????????????
hi
the timer does not seem to work on mine, it just blocks completely from as soon as i add a URL.
on Chrome 5.0.375.29 beta
Hello,
Can you paste the blocked url text here so that i can test the scenario ? For eg a.com – Blocked during0900-1700 AND after 60 minutes in a day. Applied on Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday .
This will allow me to test it and fix the bug !
Hi Saravanan,
Its not working in Ubuntu 10.04. It worked couple of times yesterday but thats all…
suresh
Hello Suresh,
I use 10.04 and so far i have not had any issues. I will try to do a fresh install in my friends laptop (10.04) and will try to test it out !
Does/will Nanny have the power to limit the amount of time a site can be accessed within a certain time frame? For instance, rather than allowing access to a site for 90 minutes in a day, I want to allow access for 15 minutes in a 4 hour period.
btw, nice extension!
Hello Jimmer,
Currently there is no way to specify time on a different interval other tha a day. I will look into the code on how easy it is to implement this feature ! Thanks for using it !
Jimmer,
I took a look at the code and it is a bit tricky to add this functionality. I have a few exams coming up. I will take a more detailed look after my exams.
Hi I was excited to use this extension but it is not working for me.
I put in a website and put the time slot and make it for every day.
It tells me it is blocked but when I check the website I can still access it. Please help!
Hello JB,
Thanks for using Chrome Nanny !
I can think of two possible reasons for this problem:
a) One of your whitelist url is interrupting with a block listed url : Eg google.com/reader in block list and google.com in whitelist. Since whitelist take precedence, Google reader will always be allowed.
b) Another scenario is giving wrong urls – For eg if you want to block gmail, then the url you have to use is mail.google.com and not gmail.com. Can you check what is the final url that you want to block and try entering it ?
If none of the above applies to you , yu can email me the list of block list or whitelist urls to me and the url which is not working. This will allow me to test it locally.
Well it seems to be specifically Google Images. I was trying to block certain google image searches but I even tried google images itself and it does not work. I hope this makes sense.
Hello JB,
–wordpress filler–
To block Google images you need to add two URLs to Chrome Nanny : images.google.com (for main image search page) and google.com/images (for images result page).
–wordpress filler–
I tried adding these urls and Chrome nanny blocked the urls correctly. Of course, since Chrome Nanny does not have regular expression support, you cannot block “some” results of image search and allow others. I will look into the best way to add regexp support.
–wordpress filler–
Hope this is useful to you !
Ok so I cannot block say if I searched “dogs” I could not just block that search I would have to block the entire google images site?
As of now you cannot block specific queries – only entire domains like google.com (or subdomains like images.google.com) . I have been thinking for a good way to bring in regular expressions so that you can say dont allow any url that looks like google.com/images/*dogs* is not allowed. I will look into this more closely in the weekend and will add the feature if its not too much work.
Hello JB,
I have pushed the code which has regexp support today . In your scenario , the blocked URL regexp will look “google.com/images.*dogs” . I also added a tab where you can validate the regexp for correctness and also test it against a target url. You can use it to test against your individual scenario. Hope it makes Chrome Nanny more useful !
I’m having this problem – all of the websites on my blocklist are still accessible!
Hey Saravanan,
Thanks for creating the first usable “Leechblock-like” extension for Chrome. I haven’t found a lot of flaws but some minor annoyances, which maybe only bother me. If you feel comfortable putting the source code out into the world (for example through github.com) I think you would attract developers which could fix the small papercuts that Chrome Nanny still has (for example the google.com/images/*dogs* problem)
Greetings,
Sebastian
Hey Sebastian,
Thanks for the comment ! Yes I am looking at the regexp issue. And you are right – I guess I will put the code in a common code repository soon !
The regexp issue seems to be resolved, at least for me “http://www.google.*/reader*” blocks GoogleReader but not the main site.
Hello Sebastian,
You are right. Chrome Nanny has a rudimentary support for regexp – what this means is that if you write a “correct” regexp then it will block correctly . But if it is a bad regexp, it will throw a syntax error (behind the scenes) and it may not block anything at all. That was the reason , I did not publicize this feature . I am written a more robust code now and will try to push it by tomorrow !
Hello Sebastian,
I have pushed the code which has regexp support. I also added a tab where you can validate the regexp for correctness and also test it against a target url. Hope it makes Chrome Nanny more useful !
[…] I wrote a Chrome extension recently called Chrome Nanny – For more details see Instructions For Chrome Nanny – A Leech Block like extension for Chrome . This post is primarily about sharing some the tips I learnt during the process of […]
[…] estimate tasks at much more accurate fashion ! Project Hamster is also one of the inspirations for Chrome Nanny which I have detailed […]
Hello:
Thanks for the good job. One of the features of Leechblock that I really liked was the fact that you could not change the setting of a site (more accurately a block set) during the blocked time. In Chrome Nanny, this is a bit simpler. One just needs to retype a text. Is it possible to disable the options of blocked sites during their block time?
FGH,
The original version of Chrome Nanny did not allow editing/deleting during the time it is blocked. But it was added recently to allow honest changes – For eg if you mistakenly set Block Time as 0000-2359 , then in the old scheme you can never edit/remove it. Now you can if you type a 64 character random string.
If you find typing this to be easy, then I may need to increase the length of it 🙂
It is also not clear to me how we can block a site 24/7 in Chrome Nany. This was possible in Leechblock by setting the time limit to zero.
Regards
Hello FGH,
You can set “Block Time” field to 0000-2359 to block a site 24/7 .
This is very cool. Can we have wildcards as part of a website name? For instance, if we want to block all sites with porn in their name, we simply type *porn*.
Thanks for the great work!
Hello Alejandro,
To block all sites with porn in their name, just use porn as the URL . Since Chrome Nanny checks for substring matches, this will work. But if you want to block a part of a specific site : eg google searches for porn then you can use google.com/search.*porn . Note the “.” before * which is needed. Hope Chrome Nanny is useful to you !
hi admin
i`ve done the same by typing google.com/search.*porn
but still i doesnt work
what should i do???
Emy,
Google does not always has that url for search. It can have different set of values based on how you search – from search bar , google ssl, instant search etc. May be google.com.*porn is a better regexp?
[…] May 31, 2010 by Saravanan Thirumuruganathan 1. Desktop Notifications: Now available to extensions in Chrome Google is adding more APIs to Chrome at a rapid clip. This looks pretty neat and might be a good feature for Chrome Nanny. […]
Is it possible to implement the export / import feature from Leechblock?
I have an extensive list of sites (about 150) that I use in firefox. I use this list across machines and I’d like to be able to use it in chrome nanny.
Is there a quick way to do this?
Thanks for the great work!
Hello Firefly,
There is no import/export feature in Chrome Nanny as of now. It is in my to-do list though but I am not sure when I will start working on it. I am currently working the block sets feature in LeechBlock which should make it easy for you do bulk copy paste. I will try to increase the priority of the feature now that you had asked for it.
[…] Instructions : Instructions For Chrome Nanny – A Leech Block like extension for Chrome […]
@All, I have pushed the code which contains block set feature. Now you can group urls to block and apply same block settings to them – This feature is similar to leechblock , except that you can add arbitrary number of blocksets. A new chart for block set statistics is also added.
For the existing Chrome Nanny users, it does a migration of your existing urls. Each URL becomes a block set.
I have tested for various scenarios and Chrome Nanny seems to work fine. If there is any bugs, please post it here and I will fix it ASAP.
Chrome Nanny download link is not working.
Hello Harry,
Thanks for pointing it out. This seems to be an intermittent issue from Google’s end ! I am not sure what is the root cause, and I have no control on this issue.
I tried installing it few times and it succeeded most of the time. So if the install failed the first time , can you try it after some time ?
This seems like it is a great extension, but I cannot get the clock going. For instance, I’ve got a block set for facebook.com, 0000-0000, 30 minutes, and no whitelisted URLs. But when I click the clock icon, it seems to be sitting at 00:30 without changing.
Hello Craig,
For your settings Chrome Nanny will allow at most 30 minutes of facebook usage in a day. The statistics are updated once a minute so after you use facebook for couple of minutes, you will see the remaining time decreasing. Are you noticing some thing else ?
So, I realized what was going on. The settings were fine, but they weren’t working because I had a * expression that was incorrectly formatted. The curious thing was that I had already realized that and deleted it from the list in the settings menu – but it continued to appear in the clock icon drop down. (In fact, even when I deleted all of the block sets it continued to show up.) Once I uninstalled the extension and reinstalled it, the block worked without any trouble.
Hello Craig, thats surprising. I will check this and reply back.
So, I’m not sure if this is related, but it could be. When I reset everything, I had the blocks applying seven days a week. After a day, I decided to uncheck Saturday and Sunday. Today (Saturday), however, the blocks seem to be still applying – at least, the clocks are counting down under the icon. I double checked that the changes are reflected on the configuration screen.
Maybe there is something barring changes that relax restrictions from taking hold?
(Anyway, I should also say that I really like the extension – thanks so much!)
Dear Saravanan,
Thank you so much for such a time-conserving device. Out of curiosity, is there any reason you know of that Chrome Nanny might reset and suddenly lose its list of blocked and white-listed URLs (and tags and statistics for that matter)? That happened once about three weeks ago, which I chalked up to something accidental on my part, but just now I realized that again Chrome Nanny is empty. Does Nanny update automatically or something, causing this?
Thank you for your time!
Kevin, it has happened once to me when I upgraded to Chrome beta but I think it is not really Chrome Nanny’s fault. Alternatively, Chrome Nanny stores the relevant info in the profile folder – so if the profile is corrupt or the folder is deleted, Chrome Nanny will lose its “memory”.
Saravanan,
Thanks for the rapid response. I think you answered my question well.
– Kevin
Hi, just wanted to say I’m revising for an exam in 2 weeks’ time and I just downloaded this extension and it is GREAT, increased my productivity a million percent. Thank you so much for your hard work.
Jenny
Thanks Jenny for the kind words ! All the best for your exams !
I accidentally disables chrome nanny, how to I enable it again?
Hi Bhaswanth,
You can go to Tools -> Extensions and then click on “Enable” link near Chrome Nanny (for Chrome version 6). For previous versions, click on wrench icon and select Extensions and then click enable link near Chrome Nanny.
Hi,
Isnt this quite a large flaw in the software as all I actually have to do to get onto the website even if I have blocked them is right click and then disable. There is no password etc required to turn it off, its too easy
Great extension! Can one specify exceptions like in Leechblock? For example .*.org, +wikipedia.org. The intention would be to block all .org sites but not wikipedia.org.
Thanks!
Hello Ioana,
It is certainly possible to do that using Chrome Nanny. The idea is to have a blockset with the url as “.*.org”. This will block all .org sites. Now go to the white list tab and add wikipedia.org . This will make sure that wikipedia is always available even though other org files are blocked. Hope this is useful !
Hey at one point i had a moment of weakness and pressed disable in the options of chrome nanny – now how do i get it back??? D:
Hi Gingy,
You can go to extensions menu by clicking Wrench icon -> Tools -> Extensions. Alternatively, you can enter chrome://extensions/ in the address bar for the same. Go to the section for “Chrome Nanny” and click Enable.
K umm.. I accidentally disabled chrome nanny while I was playing around with it and now it disappeared from the top of the tab. How do I enable it again and make it reappear beside the address bar?
Hi Lianna,
You can go to extensions menu by clicking Wrench icon -> Tools -> Extensions. Alternatively, you can enter chrome://extensions/ in the address bar for the same. Go to the section for “Chrome Nanny” and click Enable.
How do I block just such a mask domain.
bit.ly/* ?
I write like this
bit.ly/.*
– does not work.
Hello Delaf,
Chrome Nanny by default uses a substring match. So if you have “bit.ly” in the blockset, it will be blocked automatically. ie by default it blocks the entire domain. If you want to allow one subdomain – lets say bit.ly/blah, then you need to manually add it in white list.
Several questions:
1) I would like to block a website (foo.bar) between the hours of 1300 and 1900 on weekdays, and limit useage of the same site to one hour per day, on all days.
Is there any way to do so?
2) Is there any plans to add a way to specify ‘apply this daily limit only during the listed hours and allow unlimited access outside those hours’?
3) Is there any plan to make the ‘limit to n minutes per day’ to ‘limit to n minutes per user-specified-period’?
4) is there any way to make a block that is “block when used for more than n minutes a day” without also specifying a blocking period?
5) Is there a reason my block sets are staggered in Blocked URL view?
6) Can I specify a redirect URL that is not a http/https? (about:blank, for instance)
Hi Galen,
1. You can do it indirectly as follows : a) create a blockset for foo.bar that applies only on weekdays (use Apply On Days) . Enter block time as 1300-1900. Enter “Max Time In a day (in minutes)” as 60. This will not allow you to visit foo.bar on weekdays between 1300-1900 and other times max of 60 mins is allowed. b) create another blockset with say foo.bar/ (note the extra slash at end). Make this blockset applicable only one weekend. Enter blocktime as 0000-0000 and max time as 60 minutes. This will allow foo.bar all day but at max 60 minutes.
2. Yes. If you do not set “max time in a day”, then you do not have any limits on accessing the site outside the blocktime.
3. You can have limit to n minutes a day. Set block time as 0000-0000 and set the “max time in a day” to n minutes. ‘limit to n minutes per user-specified-period’ does not exist but is in the roadmap.
4. Answer is same as (3)
5. I did not get the question. Can you clarify ?
6. Currently chrome nanny allows URLs to begin with http/https/file (for local files). I had some issues when the redirect url was about:blank. Chrome was giving an error when redirected. I will check if it is still the case. If not,I will allow “about:*” urls also.
Future features planned can be found in https://saravananthirumuruganathan.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/chrome-nanny-road-map/ . Admittedly it is stale, but I will update it soon.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Re 5: The graphic layout for the options page in the chrome windows is a little odd. I think it is because one of my regex lists is longer than the window width. Minor, really.
Re 2: What I want is “never allow during these hours” and “only allow for this many minute per day during all other hours” to apply to the same regex.
5 . Will try to fix it
2. Chrome Nanny currently has this behavior. If block time is not empty then sites are blocked during that time. If max time in a day is specified, then during the time the site is not blocked it will have a upper limit on the no of times you can spend in the site. Feel free to experiment with the settings !
Re 2)
What I want is:
I want to block, for instance, .*slashdot\.org during 1200-2200. Absolutely no access at that time.
I ALSO want to limit .*slashdot\.org to an hour, total, between 2200-1200 .
So, attempting to access games.slashdot.org at 3 pm (1500) is disallowed. Attempting to access idle.slashdot.org at 8 am is fine, but time limited.
Hi Galen,
That is the current behavior of Chrome Nanny (unless I misunderstood your question). So enter slashdot.org in the url, block time as “1200-2200” , max limit as 60. This will block access between 1200-2200. Access at any other time will start the clock and you will have at most 60 mins for the rest of the day (0000-1159 and 2201-2359).
Are you observing some other behavior ? If so , you can send me the details and I will look into it !
Brilliant extension, thankyou!
One question: I don’t really understand the point in the Challenge when you can just ask chrome to disable the extension in 3 clicks.
I presume its impossible to create something that can’t be enabled/disabled so easily?
Hello JMonkfish,
You are right. Chrome does not allow extensions to prevent themselves from getting disabled / uninstalled. That is the reason why there is no challenge during disable.
Is there a way to block use of particular gmail accounts? I sometimes run two at a time, with one in incognito mode. I’d like to be able to restrict myself to just accessing one of the accounts.
Hello Sarah,
I am not sure if I understand the question correctly . If your question is how to force yourself to go to gmail account in one tab (and prevent access to it other mode) then Chrome Nanny cannot do it. Chrome Nanny treats urls as binary – it is either blocked or not blocked.
Also, Gmail recently added a feature to switch multiple accounts seamlessly – you can take a look at http://lifehacker.com/5603307/google-launches-multiple-account-sign+in-for-multi+google-account-holders . This will prevent you from using an incognito window !
[…] Instructions : Instructions For Chrome Nanny – A Leech Block like extension for Chrome […]
Chrome Nanny is amazing.
One suggestion: In the statistic plot, make the bars thinner so that we can see more charts with out doing page down.
What’s the best way to completely block a site, e.g. facebook? I’m cutting myself off cold turkey for a while 🙂
Gareth,
You can enter block url as facebook.com and block time as 0000-2359. This will block it for the whole day.
Hello, I’m using ChromeNanny, and sometimes it works fine, and sometimes it doesn’t. I can’t work out what the rules are that means it doesn’t block, but sometimes it doesn’t block a site it should.
I think this link should take you do to a screengrab.
http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0093009/gp/jeremymiles/2BqZa0
Thanks,
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
Apologies for the late reply. Somehow missed these comments. I think the issue is the entry for latimes. You have used “*.latimes”. The right one is “.*latimes.com” or even just “latimes.com”. “latimes.com” is the most preferrable as Chrome Nanny will do a substring (and not an exact) match in the URL and will catch any latimes URLs. Chrome Nanny has a validate regular expression tab in the settings page where you can test your regexp for potential issues.
Hope this will fix the issue.
Hi there, love chrome nanny – getting loads done, but where is the edit/delete option? I blocked my gmail and now actually have to get in there for a critical work email….ahh I can’t find how to change the settings??? HELP
Hi nr1,
You can right click on Chrome Nanny’s icon and goto its options page. In the “blocked urls” tab, you will see individual blocksets and their respective edit/delete buttons. Clicking them might raise a challenge if the blockset is currently blocked.
[…] Blokeret min adgang til Flickr, Facebook og Last.fm i tidsrummet 00:00 – 20:00 hver dag via Chrome Nanny […]
Nice program.
That being said, I have trouble with the Challenge.
I like a good challenge when I see one, and so I changed the setting to 128 characters.
However, now when I try to edit the settings (let’s say, add a banned URL), the program only displays the first 118 characters that I have to copy, but still requires the full 128.
How can I fix this ?
Thanks.
Hi Jerome,
You can scroll the challenge text. Just move the mouse pointer to the end of the textbox and perform an action similar to “pulling”. It should show the remaining. Alternatively you can try to extend the dialog window.
This isn’t working for me- and I’ve tried the ‘pulling’
Sophie,
I am not sure what you refer as pulling. If you can give some sample url (and time etc), it would be helpful for me to debug.
OK it worked. Thanks.
I like your extension.
But one quick question.
I can turn nanny on and off incognito mode without having to enter a challenge.
Is there anyway to make a challenge every time you change the incognito mode setting on or off?
Thanks,
Adam
Adam,
Chrome does not allow an extension to control the behavior during disabling/uninstalling. You can make Chrome Nanny work in incognito mode by going to extensions menu and enabling ‘Allow in incognito’ checkbox.
There is an option for being unable to turn off chrome nanny in incognito mode, although it has some nasty side-effects:
1) right click the chrome nanny button and hide it
2) block “chrome://extensions/”
Of course, it is very inadvisible to block this page 24-7, as you will not be able to make any changes to any of your extensions.
Hello Mads,
You are right. Chrome added the ability to hide an extension icon and Chrome Nanny can block chrome://* . But i refrain from telling about it as incorrect settings will prevent you from toying with extensions and worst case might cause a backlash against chrome nanny leading it to be uninstalled 🙂 Thanks for sharing it – Hopefully geeks will use it !
Ok, I screwed up and blocked access to all my settings pages (blocking .* all the time). Help! I even enabled chrome nanny in incognito mode. I’m sure I could fix it by uninstalling chrome, but is there an easier way?
@Mads,
You can uninstall Chrome Nanny and reinstall it. I will add not blocking chrome pages as higher priority item !
Saravanan –
Great app! Thank you. Saves a lot of time 🙂 However…
It is too easy to add a Whitelisted URL to the list. It can be done anytime, even when “You should be working” 🙂
I suggest to add the same check:
if(chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage().BackGroundManager.checkIfBlockSetShudBeBlockedNOW(blockSetName))
challengeUser(blockSetName,’E’);
to the function addUrlToWhiteList()
e.g. to prevent execution of storeWhiteListedUrl(url,allTagsToUrl);
Sincerely,
Vlad
Vlad,
Thanks a lot for pointing it out. I will push this feature in the next iteration (sometime next week).
Why does Chrome Nanny all of a sudden block websites that aren’t on my blacklist? How can I make it stop?
Susan,
That is surprising. Most likely it could be because your blockset contained some url that is a regular expression. If you do not mind, can you send a snapshot of the Chrome Nanny’s popup page (ie what you get when you click the icon) and the url that is blocked ? I can take a look into the issue .
Hello Saravanan,
I would like to know what are the most distracting sites that most people decided to block.. ofcourse, if this leads to trouble, just ignore my request 🙂
Waseem,
All the information in Chrome Nanny is stored locally. This means that I do not get any data on the usage patterns of the users. From few of the past comments, I presume that most sites are facebook, reddit, google reader, flickr. I myself have set it to reddit, digg, google reader, nytimes and google news.
thanks great plugin
Hey thanks for the very nice effort. But that 64 character challenge thing is a truly monstrous pain. I got one single character wrong and it asked me to type a whole new number all over again?
Unfortunately I’m a little short sighted and error prone, so there’s no way I want to keep going back and trying to get a 64 character password right every time I want to edit a block list.
Can you at least fix it so that the same challenge code persists for as long as is needed to get it right?
Jebus,
The rationale was to make the overriding the challenge as hard as possible. One thing you can do is this : Goto options -> General options tab. It has an option for ‘Length of Challenge Text’. You can reduce it to 32. The behavior is still the same but the length is less. I have added a few features that make it ‘easier’ to type – For eg, since people get confused with O, 0 and o , I have not included them.Same with 1 and I and so on. Hope this is helpful !
i’m sorry to disturb you but while using chrome i tried to us the length of challenge text to higher number of strings.. like 128.. but the problem is it only shows 114 characters now i can’t edit the challenge text back to the default setting.. can you pls help me..
don’t mind my comment.. i have already found a solution by editing the html code.. thanks anyway.. 🙂
and also great work for chrome nanny.. i really like it…
Paul, Glad you were able to figure it out !
Paul, why on earth wouldn’t you share how you fixed it with other people? If this isn’t fixed I’m definitely junking this extension.
Again thanks for the great effort. However I’m too old and slightly blind for this. I couldn’t even figure out how to edit my blocklist (it wasn’t obvious). So unfortunately I installed it in favour of the (easier to use) StayFocusd. Your plugin is slightly more configurable, with more options, but not as easy and intuitive to use.
I have a blocklist of .* with a whitelist including \.pandora\. and \.google\. .
First issue: This blocks, among other things, chrome:extension — this is probably bad behavior. Probably shouldn’t block any urls that purport to use chrome as the scheme.
Second issue: some of my whitelisted windows were blocked. 3 doc.google.com windows were blocked, 1 wasn’t. My pandora.com window was blocked. None of my mail.google.com windows were blocked.
Galen,
I will do some changes for the preventing blocking chrome pages.
This isn’t working for me any more. I had it working until I changed the options and typed in the code. Now I am able to edit and delete lists without typing in the block code and no matter what options i try to block websites they are still accessible all day.
Emily,
Can you paste your blockset settings if you do not mind ? It might help me to debug the issue.
Hi Saravanan,
Thanks for making Chrome Nanny! I have a couple comments. First, for some reason, Chrome Nanny is not working on my notebook which is a Windows 7 64bit machine. I’m not sure why it isn’t working, but it has the same Chrome Nanny settings as my desktop, so I don’t think it is a regular expression problem. I think my Chrome version was the developer version, but I’m not sure. I’ve tried changing it to the normal user version, but strangely the version number did not change.
Also, I would like to block certain sites during the daytime, but instead of completely blocking them, I’d like to be able to access them for lets say a max time of one hour. I’d also like to have full access to these sites during the evenings. Is there a way to do this with the current setup? I hope this is possible, or will become possible in future versions.
Thank you and keep up your awesome work!!
I have installed Chrome Nanny but I cannot find it anywhere on my computer! I have looked everywhere I can think of, including moving the little arrow (<) at the bottom toolbar to see if there is a link there. Could you please help?
Also thank you for developing this. If I can get it to work I will be so pleased.
cheers
serena
Its okay I just found it!! Thanks again.
serena
@Serena,
Glad that you found it. Sometimes, Chrome pushes extensions below an arrow sign to save addressbar space. Hope you find it useful !
I have two Blocksets set up, a general timewasters one that includes google.*/reader and a separate one for google.com. I was trying to test that I would still be able to search google when the first timewasters blockset was active. When I engaged the lockdown of only the first blockset, it included google.com, both on the list of blocked sites and in practice (I get redirected to my todo list).
This is my first blockset:
URLs : facebook.com,cnn.com,google.*/reader
Blocked During : 0600-2000
Max Time : 60 minutes every 6 hours
Apply On Days : Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday
This is the second one:
URLs : google.com
Blocked During : 0600-2000
Max Time : 60 minutes every 6 hours
Apply On Days : Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday
As a test I just tried to lockdown the Google only blockset and it’s blocking everything on both blocksets so I think this is something with the program, unless I’m missing a setting somewhere.
Ok – nevermind – I misunderstood how the Max Time and Blocked Time settings interacted. I was hoping to be able to set up so I could only spend a certain amount of time on the websites during work hours but give myself free reign during other times. If I (now!) understand the settings correctly, there’s no way to do this (other than disabling the extension).
@Chris,
I guess its a common pitfall when you come to Chrome Nanny from LeechBlock. I plan to implement this feature sometime in the near future.
When I press the lockdown button, nothing happens. Is there some procedure to using it that i am unaware of?
Corey,
Did you select the appropriate blocksets or the time ? Can you give any specific example ?
Yeah, I did those things. It sounds like it’s the same bug that some of the people below me are talking about. I’ll check again this weekend.
Whenever I exit Chrome, my timer resets. How can i fix it so it keeps track?
Mark,
That is surprising.Chrome Nanny explicitly stores all settings in local storage to avoid this. Can you give a specific instance of the problem so that I can debug?
The option to block a block list for X minutes per user defined period (5 minutes per hour in this case) does not seem to work at all?
Chrome Nanny will either block a regexp (*.com) or allow it (if it is on the whitelist) but does not seem to reset the timer to allow 5 minutes use when a new hour starts?
Has anyone else noticed this problem?
Great extension however…
My mistake!
I had the Block between hours set for 0000 to 2359 AND the maximum time set to 5 mins per hour… I thought that would allow only 5 mins per hour during the blocked period…
I now have only the 5 mins per hour option set and it is working perfectly!!
Thank you great extension – I was using Leechblock but I much prefer Chrome to Firefox, and StayFocused did not offer the “allow 5 minutes per hour” option that I find very very useful. If I do not allow myself a little 5 min reward per hour to look forward to then I just end up turning the extension off or adding bad pages to the allowed list!
@Terry,
Glad you got it solved !
Hi, this looks like a very useful extension, but I’ve tried to block the BBC websites and have accidentally managed to block the Chrome Nanny extension itself! I just put “bbc” in as the URL to block, so it’d include BBC News, BBC iPlayer etc., but didn’t realise the address for Chrome Nanny included those letters and now I can’t go in and edit my mistake until 9:30 tonight… Should I just type in the various BBC website addresses individually?
@EC,
This a side effect of the fact that Chrome Nanny’s id gpdgmmdbbbchchonpfanphofpplhmcmn which bbc in it. I have implemented a fix that will not block chrome:* pages. I will push it out this weekend.
Looks like I have repeated this issue.. except I set a lockdown using .* for the whole internet late at night. Foolishly.
I can amend it in the morning but it currently blocks the options page 🙂
I have a problem with the lockdown function. When configuring a lockdown, the input in the ‘hours’ field is ignored. Only the input in the ‘minutes’ field is used, so I can’t create a lockdown longer than 55 minutes. Which is a shame, because the lockdown function is really great : )
@Pug,
I have fixed the bug. I will push the new code sometime this weekend.
I just installed your extension and absolutely love it! Thanks so much! One problem I’m having is with the LockDown feature. Any time I try to put it into LockDown mode, say for 12 hours, it doesn’t seem to recognize the hour field. If I have it set for 12 hours and 0 minutes, nothing happens. Meanwhile, if I have it set for 12 hours and 5 minutes, it will only go into LockDown mode for 5 minutes. I’ve tried it over and over again with nearly every hour option, and it always just implements LockDown for whatever is in the minute field. Is anybody else having this issue, or does it have something to do with my settings?
@Rachel,
I have fixed the bug. I will push the new code sometime this weekend.
Was looking for a suitable substitute for Leechblock on Chrome, this is perfect! Dare I say, even better than the original?
Dear Saravanan,
I have been using this Chrome extension for a few months now and it’s brilliant. It’s such a good idea, and you’ve developed it well. It’s seriously helped me with my dissertation! (I’m a serial procrastinator on the internet)
I just wish I discovered it sooner. I probably would have been good for me from the beginning of my 4th year at uni! It needs to be promoted more so that more people are aware of it’s capabilities.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you
Sophie
Thanks Sophie for the kind words !
Thank you for the extension!
I would like to enable facebook from 7:30AM to 8:00AM.
So I entered in Block Time 0800-0730, but when I saved the form the Block Time field became empty.
How to do it?
@Valentin,
Chrome Nanny uses military time to denote end points. Also the end points must be in increasing order.
For eg : for 7:30-8:00 AM, you will have 0730-0800 .
For 07:30-8:00 PM, you will have 0730-2000 .
Hope this helps !
There is a big pb : The challenge text is useless as one can bypass it by simply typing .*.* or any url into the whitelisted sites.
Eric,
Since many people feel this is an issue , I will add a filter to prevent .*.* from being added to the whitelist.
Good Work Saravanan. Saved me from a lot of junk time . I wish I had this earlier . Anyhow its better to be late than never.
Thanks and keep it up . I have a few ideas regarding an extension for chrome . But dont have development expertise . Wanna discuss please mail me.
Hey Rajesh,
Feel free to ping new features in the comment section and I will put them in the road map.
Just started using Nanny – very useful.
I have a problem, though: My Lockdown Duration seems to ignore the X Hours input. Nothing happens if I press Begin Lockdown. X Minutes does work as expected. If I use a combination of Hours and Minutes, it just ignores the Hours.
Mac OSX 10.6.7 + Chrome 11.0.696.57
Thanks.
I noticed your reply further up in the thread, and I will await the update – sorry for the lack of RTFM 🙂
Thomas,
The lockdown feature is finally fixed !
Help! I’ve created a block on .* which blocks everything, but that includes all the Chrome and Chrome Nanny configuration pages, since they’re also URLs. How can I remove that block?
I was looking for a way to basically block everything except a few specific sites. It works fine, the whitelisted sites are available and everything else is blocked … but blocking the config for Nanny and Chrome was rather unexpected! Since I hadn’t finished the configuration, I hadn’t configured any permitted time per day, so it appears that I have no way of ever getting back to the Nanny config page.
I found that I can start Chrome without extensions, but doing that also seems to remove the ability to configure extensions so doesn’t really solve the problem.
Is there a solution?
Aha, I managed to solve the problem by messing with my system clock to side-step the block window. I’ve now added “chrome” to my whitelist, but I think it would be sensible for you to add chrome:// and chrome-extension:// (?) and other internal configuration type URLs to a hidden internal whitelist, so people can’t accidentally lock themselves out of the Nanny configuration pages!
Neil,
I agree. I will hopefully add this feature soon and release it !
Please do. This is most relevant to my interests.
Thanks! Now that I’m past last night’s annoying problem and have everything configured properly, it’s a great product. Thanks for your work on it.
Neil
Hey is it possible to creat two block sets of the same website?
one for weekend and one for the week.
for example i want to block facebook under the week from 0900-2200
and at the weekend from 0800-1800.
Is this possible?
Please give me a feedback THX
Patrick
Patrick,
Currently there is no way to have two blocksets for “exact” url. You can bypass it with some extraneous characters. For eg.
http://www.google.com and
http://www.google.com/
This will allow you to have two blocksets even though they block same site.
Hi. This looks like a great tool, and I’d love it to work for me.
2 questions
I set my blocked set incorrectly and want to modify the times – but can’t see how to start going about doing it.
Also – I right clicked the icon, top right next to the spanner, and selected disable and now i can’t figure out how to re-enable it.
Hope you can help me out – it looks great.
Kaylee,
If you have blocked set incorrectly, you can go to the options page by right clicking on icon and selection options. In the blocked urls tab, go to the corresponding blockset and select edit. It might ask you to enter a 64 character . Enter it and you will be able to modify it. Alternatively, you can wait till the block time is over and then edit it without the challenge text.
If you disabled Chrome nanny, you can click on Wrench->Tools->Extensions, look for Chrome Nanny and then select enable it.
Hello. When I blocked several sites through 0700-1700,1900-2400, and then clicked save URL, it shows my blocked sets on the bottom but does not show the block during:_______
part. Its empty. The reason this is an issue is because the sites aren’t blocked. May you help please?
Thank you.
Paul,
The issue is the 2400 in your block time. Can you change it to 2359? This should fix it. I will put out a fix to validate timings in the next release.
how can i unblock a website like facebook?
Catherine,
You can unblock by going back to options page and modifying the blocktime of the url.It might throw a challenge which you must answer.
thank you sir……..
Hi. Thanks for your reply to my question on May 16. All working well now.
(Except I need something that will kick me, when I use my husband’s computer instead of mine!)
Hi Saravanan…
I am unable to enable Chrome Nanny after I disabled it… Its nowhere to be found. How do I enable it?
@Qaiser,
It can be found in Wrench -> Tools -> Extensions and then find the entry for Chrome Nanny. It will also have an enable link .
Hi,
The “Blocked during” field on each of my block sets becomes blank after I save it:
URLs : en.wikipedia.org
Blocked During :
Max Time : 0 minutes every 1 hour
Apply On Days : Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday
Tags:
In the popup, the wikipedia URL is listed as “allowed” until Midnight, even though it is Monday (so it should be blocked).
Any idea how to fix this?
Thanks
I’ve instructed Chrome Nanny to block a number of sites from 0000-0000 and for a max amount of 0 minutes per 24 hours — so you can see I don’t want to access these sites at all. Yet when I click on the clock, it shows that the sites I want blocked are actually allowed. I’ve read the instructions and don’t understand what is wrong.
John,
A max minute value of 0 means do not block.So if you want to block the site for the wholeday, you can use 0000-2359. If you want to limit it to say 10 minutes in a day , use 0000-0000 and a max minutes of 10. If you want it to block between 9-5 and allow otherwise use 0900-1700 and 0 as max minutes.
Hope this helps !
I changed it and now the URLs are shown as blocked — yet I can still access them when I type them into Chrome.
Thanks for replying to John’s question; your answer resolved my problem (see the comment just before; I didn’t realize max = 0 means do not block).
John,
I did not see your comment immediately after mine ! I am not sure what the exact issue in this case. Most likely a regular expression issue. If you do not mind, you can take a snapshot of your options page and email me/post the link here . I will be able to take a look then. The other possibility is if a more generic regexp is in the white list. Then whitelist takes priority and the site is not blocked.
Is there a way to not allow one to disable the extension? That makes it useless…
Zeira,
Unfortunately, Chrome does not allow an extension to prevent uninstalling itself. It might be a big security hole otherwise. Hence Chrome Nanny partly relies on user’s will power too !
Just to clarify, I love your extension and it worked great until I figured out how to disable it. I’m running low on will power right now 🙂 Is there a way to allow chrome://extensions/ to be blocked as an option? I guess you’ve probably looked into that already.
Thanks for the quick reply!
Yes. It is certainly possible to add chrome://extensions/ as the blockurl . But unfortunately it will block other extension’s page too ! For eg, you will not be able to view the Chrome’s extensions page at all during the blocked time. If thats acceptable you , then go ahead by all means ! If needed, you can go to the options page of other extensions by right clicking it and selecting options.
That sounds like the perfect solution. I should have thought about that earlier. Thanks for your time!
where is chrome nanny’soptions page
@abcd,
Once Chrome Nanny is installed, it will show a grey clock like icon. You can right click it to select Options. Else Wrench -> Tools -> Extensions and go to Chrome Nanny and click options.
Is there anyway of putting a password on the chrome nanny in order to make it more difficult to change blocked website settings?
Thanks for chrome nanny I think its great 🙂
@Anonymous,
I thought the 64 bit challenge was hard ! I am not sure if password can make it harder because usually they are small. If you wish , you cna make the length of challenge to be 128 characters. will that work for you ?
Hello, this might seem like a stupid question, but I want to block facebook 24 hours on all days except Monday. Can you instruct? I tried but no success. I think I’m too dumb hehehe Thanks a lot
@Bimbo,
You can enter 0000-2359 in block time and “Apply On Days” , uncheck monday.
Sweet, thanks a lot mate
*I wish I have a bimbo with me right now :))
Is there any way to avoid chromenanny from closing pages I’m actively looking at? Too often I’ll be typing something up when chromenanny decides time’s up and I lose what I was working on.
Thanks.
@mjmkk,
You can go to Chrome Nanny options -> General Options and select “Mode Of Blocking” to either show blocked page or redirect to url instead of close tab.
First, thanks for brilliant chrome extension.
I set some blocked URLs with individual time for each one of them and also set the global time limit (‘Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs’).
When click on the clock icon, I see details about how much allowed time left for each URLs.
But there is not details about the global time left for all the URLs together.
Is there an option for that?
If not, Can you add this feature in the next version?
Thanks.
Just started using this extension and finding it helpful. Thanks!
I’m hitting what feels like a bug (seemingly blocking a site that should be unrelated to any in my blocked URLs list) and I’m trying to look at the diags, but the instructions above in section 15 don’t seem quite right:
1. The storage folder on Windows is either wrong or not always correct. On my Windows XP system the folder is:
C:\Documents and Settings\nmcl\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage\
2. I can’t see the “background.html” link that you mention (I’m running 13.0.782.32 beta-m). Where exactly should I be looking?
Thanks again.
@Anonymous,
Got your details in the mail. I will debug them and send the details.
First off, thank you for making this addon. I just switched over from using Leechblock and Firefox and just started using Chrome.
I do have one question, though. Is there a way to add a list of whitelisted websites, similar to the way you add blocked sites? My situation is that I have a very short list of blocked sites, e.g. .*.com, but have a long list of whitelisted sites (over 1000). It would take me a long time to enter them individually.
@Jonathan,
Currently there is no easy way to do that. I will try to implement some import feature – Although it may not happen in the next, say, one month.
Thanks for the quick reply!
I want to block all sites except for a few. Can that be done?
Anonymous, yes it is possible. First enter the sites you want to allow in whitelist . Then add all common tlds to a block set : eg .*.com, .*.net etc . Enter blocktime as 0000-2359. This shud do ! I would suggest first experimenting a small interval as blocktime before making Chrome Nanny block sites all day . Hope this helps !
I LOVE Chrome Nanny … great job!!
I’ve tried to set it up so all internet is blocked during daytime hours.
– I set up google.ca and google.com in blocked URLs
– I have no whitelist urls
– I even added a “lockdown” to google.ca and google.com to test
– I can still access both.
– suggestions to limit all internet surfing during certain hours?
THX!
Michelle,
I am not sure what the issue is. I tried in my system and it worked fine. To block both the sites, enter them in a blockset separated by newline. If you want it to be blocked between say 9-5 , you can enter blocktime as 0900-1700. If you find that you are still facing the problem, can you take a snapshot of your blockset and email me?
Thanks Saravanan – Chrome Nanny is very helpful
@Anonymous,
Thanks for your kind words !
Hello All,
i want to create a CHROME OS extension in such a way that- when we click on the extension icon, it should retrieve the Current web page data and store some where for later use. HOW we can do that. Is it possible?
where it will store ? which API or Key word we should use to Retrieve current web page data by clicking on extension?
Any suggestion ? Please Help me out if you can!
is that POSSIBLE in Chrome OS?
@rinku,
My exposure to Chrome OS is limited. But I recall seeing some properties in manifest that can request unlimited storage permissions. Once you have that , in the worst case you can store every web data in the localstorage although, I am not sure how slow it might make the extension to be .
I’m trying to block the extensions page chrome://extensions/ yet it is having no effect on this page at all.
Nanny blocks everything else perfectly, yet any page with the chrome//: prefix is not getting blocked.
Is there any way to fix this on my end as the temptation to simply disable nanny is too great at times 😦
@Bad-Timing, chrome:// and chrome-extension:// are by default in the whitelist. This is because most people have very generic blacklist regular expression and also cannot disable Chrome Nanny. I am not sure what is the right balance here … if you have any suggestion, I am all ears !
Is there a way to make these items into a visible whitelist that you can disable by entering a 64 character code?
That way its too much hassle for most to disable these whitelisted items, yet those that really want to do this can go right ahead.
Maybe add a big warning to this whitelist as well, even though I know lots of people ignore warnings like this lol.
@Bad-Timing,
Probably thats a decent workaround. I will put it up in the roadmap . Thanks !
@Saravanan Thirumuruganathan
Thank you so much for your support. but i didn’t get the perfect picture to go ahead with that idea. i will be very much thank full to you, if you if you can tell me little bit more abt it. any site to know more abt that.!!!!!1
Question is still stands like taht oly……
Hello All,
i want to create a CHROME OS extension in such a way that- when we click on the extension icon, it should retrieve the Current web page data and store some where for later use. HOW we can do that. Is it possible?
where it will store ? which API or Key word we should use to Retrieve current web page data by clicking on extension?
Any suggestion ? Please Help me out if you can!
is that POSSIBLE in Chrome OS?
please unblock my facebook
@Dipak,
Did your facebook got blocked by Chrome Nanny ? If so check when the block time ends to use it. That information is available in the options page. If you have set it, then you can always edit even if blocked by entering a 64 character challenge.
how about a foolproof instruction on blocking sites all the time?
roulette and others sites are absolute nightmares. you bring a further one by failing to spell out that simple thing: block a website at all times.
@Guy,
I agree that Chrome Nanny is not very intuitive for beginners. I am playing with few options to make it slightly more user friendly. I plan to do all these in a new release sometime in the next 2 weeks.
Hi Saravanan
I am still experimenting with settings to get it to work the way I would like. Unfortunately, I was confused about why all the URLs that I had set any blocks for seemed to be blocked today, whether I had spent time there or not. I tried setting “Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs” to 10 in order to see if that would give me a window where I could figure out what had happened. Subsequently, I realized this will limit my total browsing time at all these sites to 10 minutes, which I don’t want.
But I can’t change it! When I go to general options, the 10 next to “Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs” appears in grey. When I try to change it, nothing happens.
In the meantime, I still don’t understand why all the sites I sought to limit are blocked. But the more urgent problem is the “maximum time” one.
Thanks so much
Rat
Idlerat,
If you block a url between say 1000-1100 and then set maxtime as 10 minutes an hour , then Chrome Nanny does the following : It blocks the url between 10 AM and 11 AM. In other times 0-10AM and 11AM-11:59PM, it will allow atmost 10 minutes each hour. Does it not work as expected?
I am too have the same issue as the above person….the “Maximum Allowed minutes in a day for Blocked URLs” is ‘greyed out’ and I am not able to change this. I tried enabling and disabling the extension but it is still in grey and I can not put my cursor in the box to change it back to 0 (currently on 10). What do I do to change this, besides uninstalling and reinstalling Nanny
I was a long time Leechblock user. Now that I am on chrome, nanny is “it” … been playing with it for a week but I must say – either I am misunderstanding something, or nanny does not work like leechblock in one vital, critical, important manner … for instance:
Block facebook.com 0700-1200, 1300-1900 maxtime 5 mins every Hour.
On Leechblock that means: beween 7am and noon, 1pm-7pm I am allowed up to 5 mins per hour of facebook max. OTHERWISE, facebook is allowed.
On Nanny, (from what I assess from testing) … the same setting means allow 5 mins per hour between 7am and noon, 1pm-7pm. OTHERWISE BLOCK facebook.
so – first, am I incorrect here?
otherwise, I am perplexed as to how I might set up a rule that essentially says
“during work hours, except for lunch you can only check facebook up to 5 mins per hour then I’m blocked. I’m allowed facebook during lunch and after dinner”
the rule up above does not do this, and I cannot see how to do this at all (since I could not even setup a set of convoluted multiple rules)
insights? clarifications? suggestions? advice?
I love the tool – for the moment the whitelist is saving me because the above problem is affecting many rules that I have imported from Leechblock, Otherwise, I too would like whitelist (and disabling) a little harder. But right now I hope I get this rule problem solved!
Thanks!
C J Cornell,
Thanks a lot for your comments ! You are right, Chrome Nanny differs from Leechblock in subtle ways that trip up people 🙂
Leechblock has two options on “When to block” – (a) Within time period OR after time limit (b) Within time period AND after time limit . Chrome Nanny by default implements (a) .
So, given a url and some time say 0900-1700 as blocktime, Chrome Nanny will *entirely* block it during that time and allow you access during other times. If you add maxtime of say 5 minutes per 1 hour into the mix, it will still block the url during 0900-1700 but during the other time allows access atmost 5 minutes per hour. This behavior is a bit extreme, but somehow made sense to me as a student. I do not want to access say google reader between 9-5 but during other time I do not want to spend more than 1 hour minutes in a day.
Wrt to your facebook scenario “during work hours, except for lunch you can only check facebook up to 5 mins per hour then I’m blocked. I’m allowed facebook during lunch and after dinner”, there is no easy way to achieve it. I have been toying with the idea of implementing option (b) of leechblock. So I will try to implement it – may be – in the next couple of weeks.
I can not get my desktop version of Chrome to block girlsgogames.com. My laptop is blocking it but it takes a few seconds to turn up the “you should be working” page. I am trying to keep my kids off this site, and I have tried all of the instructions. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
@Anonymous,
Thanks for the comments ! It is a bit hard to do that currently. Future versions of Chrome have a new API for WebRequest which will allow to prevent going to the site even before the page was fetched. I am planning to rewrite the core of Chrome Nanny with that feature once that lands in stable version of Chrome.
Whenever I input “Block Time” information, then hit “Save URL,” the block time data simply vanishes, and the web site fails to be blocked.
Also, a common issue I’m sure is setting times that run over midnight. Can one do this? All examples given here assume a midnight to midnight proposition. But what if I want to block a site for all hours except 3 PM until 4 PM. Will it accept 1600-1500 as data in the Block Time field?
@Anonymous,
Currently block time does not do much validation which I intend to fix sometime soon. I believe that when the block time “vanishes” , most likely it is due to invalid input or incorrect format. The time varies from 0000-2359. It is also assumed that start time is less than end time. So to block except during 3-4 pm, you have to enter as 0000-1500,1600-2359.
Hey, i accidentally locked in something that i need to change.
But when i go to edit, i dont understand what to do. can you help?
Emma,
I do not understand your issue. Do you mean when you blocked some url , you are not able to change it as it is currently blocked ? If so, there are two options : Simplest is to wait for the time when the url is not blocked edit it. Else go to Chrome Nanny options and click Edit button. Then, a 64 character challenge will be thrown. You have to enter the entire 64 character string correctly to edit it !
Is it working in incognito mode? I have Chrome version 13.0.782.215 m, on Windows XP and it just doesn’t seem to, though it blocks ordinary Chrome ok. I do have the ‘allow in incognito mode’ ticked in the extensions options page of Chrome.
Anthony,
Beats me. I have Chrome Nanny enabled in incognito and it works fine ! Does it still not work even after Chrome is restarted?
i’m having trouble on blocking some url’s two that are https are blocked, the others i can still consult.
raparyga,
Can you give a snapshot of your screen so that I can debug ?
I ‘m not able to access chrome nanny on the google extensions gallery. Was it removed?
Dannyha,
“Chrome” Nanny was apparent taken down due to the usage of “Chrome” in its name. I have resubmitted the app and it is under review. Hopefully, it will be up soon !
@Saravanan,
quite silly of Google to do that, what does their mail say?
Will the extension have the same id or will it change? I guess I will have to watch this page to make sure I can get the updated extension, since it has been so useful for me 🙂
@Aditya,
The mail said, Chrome Nanny has violated the branding guidelines of Google. I have republished under a different name. I am assuming that it will retain the same id but will have a different name “Nanny for Google Chrome”. It has been under review for quite some time. Hopefully it will be approved soon.
Is it possible to block certain YouTube videos using this extension? Like I want to block YouTube videos with ‘Minecraft’ in the title, though it’s not in the URL, but subsequently not have all other YouTube videos blocked as a result?
Hi,
Currently, Chrome Nanny works by matching patterns in the url. Hence it cannot block based on title . But your idea sounds intriguing. I will check if it is possible for a background script to get tab’s title. If it can, I will add it to the roadmap.
Hi! Trying to block all websites that contain “Everybody_Edits”. Have tried all combinations, with and without stars and without capitals but does not block. ie “everybody_edits”, “everybody edits”, “*everybody_edits”, “.*/.*everybody_edits” etc but doesn’t block. ie http://www.y8.com/games/Everybody_Edits still appears. (it appears on many sites and i dont want to trawl every site to block them).
Also tried “google.*everybody edits” & “google/.*everybody edits” – no luck
Regards
For some reason, if I open Chrome and immediately put in the web site URL, it will allow me access. The only time it blocks the web sites is if I go to another web site before. It works fine if I do that. Opening a new Chrome allows me to access all the web sites that should be blocked. How do I fix this?
Patrick,
That is surprising. can you check if the website was blocked at that time? Chrome Nanny should block the site immediately. There is also a backup code that runs every minute and blocks site too. If this is not the behavior you are seeing, please post / email a snapshot of your settings and I will take a look.
I accidentally uninstalled this, and I can now no longer install if from the Chrome Web store because the link is dead.
Look, it is in search:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search?q=chrome+nanny
But the page gives an error:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gpdgmmdbbbchchonpfanphofpplhmcmn?hc=search&hcp=main
pfactor,
Chrome Nanny has been temporarily removed from Webstore as it violated some branding guidelines. I have made some changes and it will be up once google approves it.
How long does it normally take to have extensions approved? I’ve been waiting with others to install Nanny on a bunch of computers.
Darryl,
It has been more than 2 weeks since Chrome Nanny was taken down. I had sent an email to webstore team and they do not have any ETA. My apologies for the inconvenience.
HI how do we block websites that contain a combination of words in the URL such as “\everybody_edits”
Gary,
if the words are a single string (say like everybody_edits) you can use just use it directly as a block url. If they occur consecutively (say everybody edits) use a regexp like everybody?edits. If they occur in the url but not consecutively (everybody blah edits), use a regexp like everybody.*edits. Hope this helps.
Quick note: based on your previous comment, i added everybody_edits as the block url and it did block http://www.y8.com/games/Everybody_Edits . If you open this url in incognito more, make sure Chrome Nanny is enabled to act in incognito too !
@Saravanan, Did Chrome webstore team say anything about this? Can we vote somewhere or make noise otherwise so that Google speeds this up?
@Aditya,
Thanks for the support. I have sent couple of mails to the review team without much success. I will look at alternative ways to speed up the problem. Or even rename and republish the extension !
Publish under a different name already. Jeez! Why do they have to make things so complicated. I need my chrome nanny!
Michelle,
If I dont hear from Chrome team, I will do that on friday. The problem with that approach is that it will make harder for the 20k users of old Chrome Nanny to upgrade . This will mean I will be maintaining two versions of Chrome Nanny – one with old name and one with new. That seems to be a decent tradeoff as of now. Please wait till friday . Thanks for your patience !
It’s sunday. News? I’d really like Chrome Nanny.
Ok folks … I really have lost patience with Google app review team. I will travelling tomorrow and will publish Chrome Nanny under a different name by evening . Thanks for all your patience 🙂
Just wondering it you’ve published Chrome nanny in the App store yet under the different name – and if so, what is it? Thanks
Shirley,
The new name is Nanny for Google Chrome 🙂 It is at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cljcgchbnolheggdgaeclffeagnnmhno
Hi Saravanan,
Thanks for the useful extension. I want to use this extension for following purpose, is there a way to do it?
Block a set of URL for a specific time and during those time interval allow these set of URLs for a limited time. For ex., block facebook.com between 0900 and 1700, but allow facebook for maximum of 20 minutes during this time.
thanks.
KP,
That is one of the features in the pipeline. I will work on that probably after next couple of weeks.
Excellent extension, increase in production appreciated especially since my firefox has 32 addons, which make it unbelievably slow.
Anyway, there are two flaws that I noticed
One you can’t have any duplicated urls between block sets, so you can’t set different rules for different days.
Secondly, there is no way to stop anyone clicking the “disable” button on the extensions menu (this is a communal computer, and this extension is better than a filter in many ways)
However, this is a brilliant (and much needed) add-on
@Anonymous,
(1) Yes. This is a design flaw that will be fixed in the near future. I am busy over the next couple of weeks and I will start working on this after that.
(2) Unfortunately there is no way for an extension to prevent itself from disabling in Chrome.
I’m having trouble making this work, which is strange as Chrome Nanny used to work for me.
Here’s an example of a blockset that I have:
URLs : http://www.facebook.com, http://www.reddit.com
Blocked During : 0800-2230
Max Time : 0 minutes every 1 hour
Apply On Days : Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday
Tags:
@Anonymous,
Sorry fr the delayed reply. I tried this setting and it blocked the sites during 8AM-10:30PM. Are you seeing some other behavior?
Hi. The only thing that keeps leech block from being the best thing since sliced bread is that I can disable it so quickly.
Is there any way I can make the challenge text a requirement before disabling?
Thanks Pete S.
Pete,
Unfortunately, Chrome does not allow an extension to prevent itself from disabling.
I have some trouble here. For some reason, Lock down only works for me. But if I try to set the time say:
http://www.facebook.com
Block during : 0800-2300
Max time: 5mins per 24 hours
Apply days…blablabla.
Then it indeed shows that facebook is blocked; however, I can still go on it ? I am so sad 😦
Laura,
I tried the settings you suggested and it worked fine for me. May be one of the other blocksets causing an issue? If you dont mind, can you take a snapshot of Chrome Nanny’s blocked urls / whitelisted urls(if any) and email to me at saravanan DOT thirumuruganathan AT gmail DOT com ? That way I should be able to check for any issues. Alternatively, you can email the local storage file of Chrome Nanny to me (it will be at C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Storage\chrome-extension_cljcgchbnolheggdgaeclffeagnnmhno_0.localstorage.
How do i block all “porn” sites from my google chrome??
@Anonymous,
Unfortunately, there is no universal list of such sites. If there is anything common to them (some word in url), you can use the substring to block it. Alternatively, you can enter all the frequent urls in a blockset. Hope it helps.
how do i block a site all day, everyday?
To do that , enter block time as 0000-2359 and “Apply on Days” as Mon-Sun.
1. Thanks for developing such a great extension, Saravanan!
2. If I remove the Chrome Nanny icon from beside the address bar, is there any way to add it back to the toolbar?
Elliot,
There are three ways to “remove” the button
(1) If you right clicked the icon and uninstalled it, you need to reinstall it from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cljcgchbnolheggdgaeclffeagnnmhno
(2) If you right clicked the icon and disabled it, you need to go to chrome://settings/extensionSettings and click on “Enabled” check box for Chrome Nanny
(3) If you right clicked the icon and selected “hide button”, you need to go to chrome://settings/extensionSettings and expand section for Chrome Nanny and click on Show Button link.
Hello Saravanan,
Great plug in but I want to block the extensions page for 23 hours and 55 miuntes on each day so I can only adjust my setting for 5 mins in each day, but the plug in won’t block the extensions page.
I know someone else asked the exact same question above and I read your response about chrome pages being automatically in the whitelist but I didn’t understand this. However all I want to know is how to block the extensions page as this would make the plug in perfect for me. It blocks other pages fine but for some reason it won’t block the extensions page, making it too easy to change the settings. And my whitelist is empty.
Thanks very much for your help
Domhnall,
The check to never block the extensions page is in the code of Chrome Nanny and works regardless of contents of Whitelist. It is one of the features,I plan to remove in the next iteration so that the page can be blocked. I plan to make the change sometime after Dec 16-18.
*Update
I’ve re-read your response to “Bad-timing” in relation to the same question I asked and understand from this that the reason I cannot block the extensions page is because it is by default, chrome pages are on the whitelist and items on the whitelist cannot be blocked. I am correct in my understanding of this and if so why can’t this be changed as there isn’t much point in having a plug-in if it can be disabled in a flash?
Thanks again
sorry I’ve just read your response now, thats good news, thanks very much
I’m having trouble getting it to block any website for the period of time I want. It looks fine until I enter the ‘Block Time’ and press ‘Save URL’. Then it block time slot is blank.
Strangely, this is not a problem when I enter 0000-0000.
Example (I entered 1645-0100 for the block time):
URLs : http://tumblr.*
Blocked During :
Max Time : 15 minutes every 1 hour
Apply On Days : Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday
Tags:
Stephanie,
I think the blocktime syntax is the problem. Chrome Nanny assumes that this list is increasing order. So to block from 1645 to 1 AAM, please enter as 1645-2359, 0000-0100 . I will push out a fix next week to warn the user in this case. Let me if this change does not work.
Thanks for developing this! My internet use was (is?) spiraling out of control slowly for over 1.5 years and on the brink of becoming an addiction, and then I found this … while it’s no real substitute for better self-discipline 😉 I’m hoping it’ll help to draw a line when my will power fails. I think it’s a great idea, it deserves a bit more promotion!!
Can you develop something that blocks during incognito surfing?
Alice,
You can go to the extensions setting page and enable Chrome Nanny to work in incognito mode too.
I just installed Chrome Nanny and am trying to figure out how to use it. This is my setup so far:
http://imgur.com/Mt4EC
As you can see, I’ve got a bunch of news websites restricted to 10 minutes per hour for 0900-1800 Monday through Friday. I have also got facebook, netflix, and reddit restricted to 5 minutes per hour from 0900-2100 every day of the week.
The problem is, this is what I see in my chrome nanny settings:
http://imgur.com/mG6qt
Today is Saturday, but as you can see, for some reason the news websites are still restricted to 10 minutes per hour. Also, I cannot access facebook, netflix and reddit at all! I think you’ve got some bugs that still need resolving, or there is something I am doing wrong during setup.
Thanks.
PS – I am using Mac OS X, if that’s relevant at all.
Nikhil,
I will look into this issue. Thanks for reporting it.
Has there been any progress with this issue? I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the plugin, but the issue I outlined persists, and I find the plugin completely unusable.
I want to block any and all YouTube pages all the time, without have to go in and assign a lockdown over and over again. Is this possible? And also, what good does it do to block anything, when all someone has to do is disable the extension? There’s got to be a way to way to hide this extension, or it’s useless. Help!?!?
Aimee,
You can set the block time as 0000-2359 and block url as youtube.com. Unfortunately, Chrome does not allow the extension to prevent uninstalling itself. You can hide the extension by right clicking it and then selecting “Hide”.
HELP! My’n sisther blocked my favo site. So i went back to de chrome nanny site and i unblocked. But now she blocked it again and she also blocked the chrome nanny site so now i cant unblocked anymore! What most i do!!!!
hanna
I guess your best bet is to get access from your sister. It is certainly possible to bypass it , but I am afraid it may not be best choice here.
How do you enable Chrome Nanny to work in incognito mode? I’ve read where it’s possible but haven’t found any instructions.
Tarmacjerry,
You can go to chrome://settings/extensions and select the entry for Chrome Nanny. When you expand, it will have a checkbox that says “Enable in incognito”. Clicking it will make Chrome Nanny work in incognito mode too.
OK, you can pretty much ignore my prior comment. After some more tinkering, I figured out what I did wrong – I set the block time as 0000-2400 instead of 0000-2359. After that change, the block list works! Then I tried to delete and that is when the challenge box came up so now I see the purpose of it! Also I saw prior post about incognito and have checked that as well. So no need for a reply at this time. I will keep tinkering and see what happens – but so far seems to be a great extension!
Dave,
I will rewrite the instructions sometime soon so that its more intuitive.
Can you tell me how the time zone is set? It does not seem to be working right , I waited to experiment and find out when it startes instead of the time I indicated but I could not. I am confused. Otherwise it is a really great extension – thanks. Please help me with setting the time right. I set today in the afternoon the timer on 1100-1800 and then at 20.00 it was still blocked. The time on my computer is right – British – london zone. Please help me
Takuka,
It takes the timezone from local machine / clock.
Thanks very much for the extension. But I have a problem with it as it doesn’t work on my Chrome. I follow your answers above but fail to do it. When I click ‘Chrome Nanny’, it says ‘URL allow (some time left for the websites I entered, It seems to block until 00am but I set it to block the whole day)’ and there is ‘none’ in ‘URL block now’. I can’t figure out why Nanny doesn’t work until 00am. Many thanks and I hope to hear from you.
Lilian, I think davew-s post above was the answer to your question.probably you need to set it like this: 0000-2359 and it will block whole day.
Hola, quiero saber si Chrome Nanny puede bloquear de 11:30 pm a 06:00 am ya lo puse en horario militar y no me bloquea! ya he seguido todos los pasos queria saber si es la posicion de los horarios el problema!?
Diana,
Can you explain the issue in English ? Google translate was not very helpful in understanding your issue.
Hi,
I think I have found a bug. I have a search engine keyword set to “w” (for wikipedia, see http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95653 for what I mean) that no longer works.
Without Nanny, I could type “w”, a space, and then my search term. Now, after I type those two characters I see Nanny’s clock icon in my search bar (presumably because all of my Nanny-blocked sites contain “www”) and my searches don’t go through.
Thanks,
Frank
Note: I’m using the Chrome dev channel, Windows 7, and only a couple non-Google extensions (xmarks, pandora desktop notification).
Oh, it also seems to be interfering with auto-complete in the search bar. E.g., “h+ENTER” used to go to hulu, but now I must type the whole thing in, and again see that clock symbol at the left side of the bar (which is from Nanny, right?).
Nevermind; please disregard my last two comments.
I found out that my problem was from Chrome itself and happened to coincide with my (re)starting to use this extension. If anyone somehow has the same problem, here’s how to fix it: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=4373e23b6fefa730&hl=en
hi, i have downloaded the chrome nanny plugin.. but of links are disabled on the plugin – LOCKSETS LOCKED DOWN NOW!, URLS BLOCKED NOW !, URLS ALLOWED NOW !, TIME SPENT ON WHITE LISTED URLS TODAY….I cannot blocksites as need. please advise. with regards, RD.
Ravi,
You need to go to the Options page and enter the block urls and the corresponding times.
great software, but my only question is is there a way to only allow certain websites? I would like to only allow a list of ten or so sites to be on.
thanks for your help!
Dan,
Yes, you can use the whitelist to achieve that. You can block all sites using “.*” as the block url and enter each of your allowed urls in white list.
Hi, I have selected to view blocked sites for 7 minutes per hour, but it will not allow me to the sites regardless..any ideas?
Samantha,
The blocking also depends on block time. If you set an url to blocked between say 0000-0100 and have set 7 minutes per hour , then the url will not be availble between 12 AM – 1AM and in the rest of time 01:01 AM – 23:59 PM. , it will be blocked after 7 minutes after usage every hour. If you only want it to be blocked after 7 minutes, enter block time as 0000-0000 .
Is it possible to set up so that during the limits only apply for specific time periods, otherwise the blocks are lifted?
What I want to do is limit certain sites to 5 minutes per hour during the work day, but have it unrestricted otherwise.
Howto set a passowrd so that my children cannot change the settings?
How can I set it to work for two different users – have time limits for each?
Shaun,
There is currently no way to set a password. I will add it to feature list. One simple way of handling two users is to have two Chrome profiles and install Chrome nanny in each of them.
Hi!
I’m not sure if this is the right place to be leaving this comment, but oh well. Just wanted to say thanks for Chrome Nanny. Great extension!!! Love the “shouldn’t you be working?” ^^ cause I really should be! 😉
Anyway, thank you for the brilliant extension. Best wishes.
I came across a strange issue, I’ve added a bunch of sites for 0600-1700 time range. Also I’ve added .* for 0000-0500 time range. Now, the first URLs are unblocked during the time outside 0000-0500. Isn’t this a bug?
Janapriya,
I was not able to reproduce the issue. Can you provide any additional details ?
hi..
how to block any website in private browsing(incognito browsing). all extension become useless in incognito browsing.
Abhyuday,
Wrench->Tools -> Extensions, select “Nanny for Chrome” and check “Allow in Incognito”
how about having to input a pssword to unlock.. say if i block google, i could bypass that by jus entering googles ip and it will go right to google.. fail!!! lol
Can i modify the blocked message to my ow words?
OneStep234,
You can go to Options -> General Options -> Redirect To URL and enter a html file which contains your preferred text.
I do not know why I keep putting the blocking time I want and it does not appear after I save the url, so it isn’t blocking the sites. What am I doing wrong?
Natleo,
Can you give an example of your block time ? It must be in military time between 0000-2359 with the start time <= end time.
I think this is a great tool. That said, the default 128-character Challenge is the most ridiculous thing I have ever encountered on the Internet (<-that may or may not be hyperbole). All I wanted to do was edit my settings on a blocked URL. Are the average users of this extension really such webcrackheads that a 128-character default is necessary to make changes? I changed my default to zero characters, but to save that change, I needed to input those 128 characters one last time (hopefully). One hundred and twenty eight characters!? Are you mad, man?
Otherwise – thanks for a great tool!
Pete,
I thought, the default was 64 characters. Let me check it 🙂
Thanks for developing this! I will be working with it and I expect it to be extremely helpful.
I’ll let you know how things go. 🙂
Your other posts are quite excellent as well, having scanned them.
[…] way to block websites on Google Chrome. If you need more info about this extension, visit the Nanny for Google Chrome Homepage. Tags: Block Web Access, Blocking Web, Google Chrome, Nanny for Google […]
Hello, I tried to block someone’s profile on Facebook using Chrome Nanny but 3 hours later I can still access it just fine. How do I fix this problem? I don’t want to block FB in general, just that person’s profile URL. THank yoU!
How can I get unlimited access in the morning and in the evening, and limited access during my working hours? For example, no blocking between 8 pm and 9 am, and access for 10 minutes every hour during the day?
Hey, application seems great – just what I need to help me pass this year on a very tough vet course. However, my problem is that when I open a new chrome window none of the sites I have blocked are immediately blocked; it takes a while for nanny to kick in, so it’s tempting for me to open a new window just to check my facebook. I’ve looked through all the faqs to no avail, is there an easy way to make nanny work as soon as i open a chrome window?? thanks
This is awesome, it’s helped me be so productive, but when I click the pop-up icon in the bar, the blocked/white-listed/allowed URLs don’t come up, even if I’ve checked ‘yes’ in General Options
There is a problem when changing time zones. Nanny blocks according to the old time zone even though I changed the time zone on my machine (Mac) and in calendar too. Help!
Nanny for Chrome seems to handle time zone changes incorrectly. It assumes that I want to continue to have restrictions operate in the prior time zone even though I have already changed the time on my computer and in the calendar as well (MacBook Air). Am I the only one to notice this bug?
Hi
Where are the Chrome Nanny options?
~Xyryll
I want to block everything, but allow access to about 10 sites. This is easy in Internet explorer, but seems to be impossible for Chrome. Am I missing something?
Thanks
Matt
how can i block a site for more than a week?
Great extension, but two comments:
First, sometimes things are not actually blocked; the popup says they are blocked, but I can still access them, even after refreshing.
Second, it is too easy to add a page to the whitelist whilst it is blocked; there needs to be some challenge text here.
One more comment: I had found that it was really easy to simply disable the extension when I wanted you use facebook when I was not “allowed” to. The extension can be made “undisableable” by some registry edit, details of which are at:
http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#ExtensionInstallForcelist
But then you have to find a way of keeping yourself out of the registry…
In addition, please disable access to the task manager!
Peter, could you please be more specific about how to achieve this? I can’t make sense of the instructions. I can’t even find the registry location as it’s listed on the page.
Hi there,
I love nanny and certainly it increases my productivity.
I want to block my gmail usage for particular time but Iam not able to do it. I did try all the given options such as mail.google.com , gmail.com , https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=https://mail.google.com/mail/&ss=1&scc=1<mpl=default<mplcache=2 but so far nothing is working. Can you please help me in this regard.
Thanks in advance.
Sachin
hello,
I am a big fan of the extension.
I put video sites (youtube, wimp etc.) on lockdown and now after it all them play a green screen and just sound. What can I do? Thank you in advance for the help.
best regards,
Dewey
Dewey, I am not sure I understand the issue. do you mean that lockdown does not work or is it that there are some sideeffects to lockdown ? I tried both scenarios but could not recreate the issue …
I don’t get it. One person gets an answer within one hour, and the rest of us wait for months thinking that nobody even reads these questions and comments…
I’ll try again:
How can I get unlimited access in the morning and in the evening, and limited access during my working hours? For example, no blocking between 8 pm and 9 am, and access for 10 minutes every hour during the day?
Create a blockset for 50 minutes of every hour, and no blockset between 8 and 9. Make your blocksets during your workhours limited.
hello,
how do i activate chrome nanny?
thank’s
So it seems ChromeNanny isn’t letting me initiate two different lockdowns for two different block sets simultaneously. I check the new block set to set the second lockdown but the “Begin Lockdown” button remains inactive. 😦
Could this be fixed or am I doing something wrong?
Chrome nanny icon not showing any of my stats, time remaining, block sets, nada. And yes it says “Yes” in general options.
same for me 😦
what do you have to do to pass the line test
thank you so much! from Kiev 🙂
Hi, I recently (today) started using Chrome Nanny. I set a lot of BLOCK sites and LOCKDOWN for a couple sites. I re-started my browser, and my computer – did all the jazz. However, the Nanny is NOT WORKING AT ALL.
It is NOT blocking anything.
I am using a Windows Vistas system. However, I am still able to access any site any time.
WHAT MUST I DO? Is there some click I must do to ACTIVATE the nanny?
Hi, right click is not working for me in the Chrome app store. It reacts as though I were right clicking on an image only. Please help, I’d love to use this app!
I used Nanny for Chrome last week to block facebook for a couple of hours. I then needed facebook so I removed the extensions and deleted all my block lists, Facebook still won’t open with a pop up saying that
“Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to http://www.facebook.com”
How can I unblock facebook so I can use it?
i think this is a wealth of information. If someone could just show me how to get to the site or whatever to set up the Chrome Nanny to start with, I will hopefully get to use it.
Hi Saravanan,
I’ve just started using your really useful extension this week. Thanks for making it!
Unfortunately, as some of my blocksets were supposed to kick in this morning, when I tried them out it didn’t work the way it should. Chrome Nanny should be allowing some of these sites for 15 min every hour between 0900-1700, but it is instead blocking them completely all the time.
An example:
URLs : facebook.com
Blocked During : 0900-1700
Max Time : 15 minutes every 1 hour
Apply On Days : Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday
Yet when I try to go to any of those sites at the beginning of an hour, I get redirected, and the Chrome Nanny status has only ever showed it as blocked. I don’t have any tabs open from these sites, and I haven’t even had a chance to visit them.
I tried googling around for an answer and reading all these comments. Seems other people have been having this problem, but no one has a solution.
Any clue why this is happening? Is there something I’m missing?
Thanks,
– ian
Hi Saravanan,
I’ve just discovered that not only is the blockset being blocked for the whole hour, but it’s being blocked for the whole day. I’ve had to remove it – because I still want to go to those sites some of the time.
Please please please can you tell me what’s going on? This is the entire reason I downloaded your extension.
Thanks,
– ian
Nevermind. I solved it myself through fiddling around…
Since Saravanan seems not to be checking this page anymore, here’s the solution to anyone googling and lost like me: You create a blockset during the time you with to block. In other words, I created one to block facebook for all but 15 minutes between 9am and 5pm, M-F, but I created it at 930am – during the time it was meant to block the site. So it blocked it all the time. When I deleted that and then entered the same blockset at 530pm, I had no problems.
Ok, seems I was wrong to say it was solved… Now it’ll let me visit the site after 5pm, but it’s still using the timer. So I can go to Facebook from, say, 515pm to 530pm, and then it blocks me – but the timer should have turned off at 5pm.
HELP! This is becoming ridiculous.
Used to work fine for me, now has stopped working on all blocked sites. I have done nothing to change the settings, which allow 0 minutes every hour and block every site all days a week 0000-2359.
I have blocked a lot of websites and it work well for +- 2 months. Yesterday I whitelisted a website for the first time and now all my blocked url don’t work anymore. All my setting are okay but the bars who come up when you click on the clock with left mouse butten stay empty no matter what I do. The same for ‘url’s allowed now’.
I didn’t change anything so all sttings are okay.
bars are still empty but the sites are blocked now.
P.S.these bars:
BLOCKSETS LOCKED DOWN NOW!
URLS BLOCKED NOW !
URLS ALLOWED NOW !
TIME SPENT ON WHITE LISTED URLS TODAY
Hey there this is somewhat of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML.
I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding experience so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
This is the only Chrome Nanny page I could find, so herein is where I’ll discuss two bugs I believe exist. First, when I enable Chrome Nanny, only some of the pages that should be blocked are blocked. I even reload the unblocked pages yet they successfully reload. Second – and this is the worst part – when I disable Nanny, all of the tabs for the blocked pages DISAPPEAR! Perhaps either of this are a result of my using the “Enhanced History” extension for Chrome?
Dang! I forgot to activate notification. Is it possible you could make sure I see the follow-up on this? If so, I would appreciate it if you did that (I am not expecting you to, I’m just asking). 🙂
Howdy! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog.
Is it very hard to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about making
my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any points or suggestions?**Many thanks
Hello I found a bug to get past the blocked sites. If you add the site as a favorite and then click on the link in your favorites you can still visit the site.
Hi Saravanan
I’m a keen user of Nanny. I think I have found a bug. I have input a maximum time to spend on my blockset. If I suspend my computer, leaving Chrome on, then after I return from suspend, Nanny counts these hours as having been spent on the blockset (ie the “stop counting after X minutes” option doesn’t work). Is there a fix or workaround for this? I can provide more information if needed.
Cheers
David
Hi Saravanan,
Is there any way to limit a site to 15 minutes each hour just from 1000-1900, but let the total access for it from 0000-0959 and from 1901-2359?
Thank you so much!
how can I block a specific facebook page ? for example, some pages on facebook contain pictures inappropriate for children, i want to block these pages without blocking the whole facebook.
Hi… it’s great… but too easy to simply disable it. Is there a way to make that subject to the 64 character disable prompt?
Minor request. In the “Manage Extensions” view, Nanny4Chrome does not have an icon. Perhaps something is missing from the extension package? Thx.
Hi, I like the extension very much. However, there’s only one thing that isn’t working the way I need it to. I would like to have a set of URL’s that can only be accessed between 11:00 a.m. and 1 p.m. My settings are:
URLs : tumblr.com
Blocked During : 0800-1100,1300-1800
Max Time : 0 minutes every 1 hour
Apply On Days : Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday
I tried leaving a space after the comma and no space, but it reads the first block and not the second. So now the site is left unblocked for the rest of the day after 11:00. If you could fix this, it would match Leechblock’s behavior and I could use Chrome as my main browser at work again! Thank you!
Hi, just here to say THANKS for fixing my issue! It’s working just the way I wanted it to!
Greetings from Norway, and thank you for a great extension! I especially like the way you make editing difficult with the 64 character challenge text.
But as has been mentioned, there is a glaring fly in the opintment: The extension can be disabled in two seconds flat which is unhelpful to productivity. I see that many have suggested that you can just block access to the extensions page itself, but that you have disabled this option because some (clumsy) people screwed up their Chrome install doing this. It seemed that you were willing to make some changes so this would be possible once again, but it doesn’t seem to have been implemented. Please, what is the status? If I can just disable the app every time I feel the need for Facebook, I might just as well not have the app, as I am sure you are well aware 🙂
Hi,
Loved your extension. Just discovered it yesterday and am already more productive! So just wanted to say thanks and offer a suggestion…
So when I have a Block Set and I try to edit it, I get this dialog to enter the long deterrent text, right? Great idea.
Except when I realize that I need to add a new URL to the block set. I’m not deleting anything, just adding a new URL that I had forgotten earlier to the URL list.
This should not require me to enter the text, as I’m just improving the block set. So, would it be possible in a future iteration to add a new button in there called “Add URL”, in addition to “Edit” and “Delete”?
The “Add URL” would of course, just add to the URL list in the set and would not require me to type the long deterrent text.
Guess that would help a lot…
Thanks again for this great time saver 🙂
Hey I set my challenge text to 128 but it does not show all the characters in the above line. Now I cant change it… Any suggestions?
Looks pretty useful, but there seems to be a bug: I can’t modify or delete any blocklists once they’ve been created. Clicking the edit or delete button does nothing– it doesn’t bring up the random string dialog. I have to uninstall the extension and re-install it.
Really need to be able to block sites easier – like in Leechblock from the context menu. Entering a code to be alowed to block something breaks the app for me…
i unblocked the set but the damn site is not working anymore!
what the hell do i do?
Hi, it seems I added a whitelist url that doesn’t work and I cannot remove it:
“mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&shva=1” (with the quotes)
How can I remove it?
Also, I wanted to whitelist that URL, even though I blocked mail.google.com. The whitelist doesn’t function for the url (without the quotes), any ideas on how can I make it work?.
I enter a blockset…
FACEBOOK
URLs : http://www.facebook.com
Blocked During :
Max Time : 0 minutes every 1 hour
Apply On Days : Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday
Tags:
Why the space of “Blocked During” gets blanked?
In theory and practice, at least initially, I loved this extension. But I’ve found that all I really have to do to escape the restrictions I’ve placed on myself through Chrome Nanny is to just go into “tools,” click on “extensions,” then simply disable Chrome Nanny for however long I want to screw around on the net. Making it that easy to just disable it kinda defeats the whole purpose of the app, doesn’t it? Is there any way to make the app a permanent addition to Chrome once a user downloads it? Then those 64 or 128 character pins would actually make some sense.
I really do like Chrome Nanny, though–I just wanted to say that again. I just read my previous post and I sound kind of pissy there, but I don’t mean to be that way. I’m just looking for some fix to help me acquire the self-discipline I need on the net–one that I can’t easily wiggle out of. :^)
Actually i want an option in this extension , so that no one can disable it expect me , that means i am asking for a password lock option for it , also please try to include feature like Leech Block that when we enable that feature , chrome nanny extension wont be visible in the extension toolbar ..
3rd class app. Very complex. Not working properly. Fix the bugs first properly before publishing.
Can I just say how much I appreciate your app, now I can work without getting distracted which is a major plus. I’ll say one more hour of youtube that becomes 3 hours
I have had no luck with Chrome Nanny. Right now it won’t let me go on Facebook, but the only block I have is to block Facebook every day from 0100-0200 (it’s 11am right now). I made that setting just to be able to do lockdowns for a certain amount of time (so I can select that block and do a lockdown for a number of hours), but now for no reason at all it’s blocking Facebook.
“Go to Chrome Nanny’s Options page”
Which is where??
Hello 🙂
Thanks for this program, it is so helpful!
One thing I don’t seem to be able to do is edit or delete any of the block sets. None of them are active right now, and I’m not in lockdown, but clicking on edit or delete seems to have no effect.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
And also, when I first open Chrome and open a Blocked URL, it doesn’t divert to my chosen URL for blocked links. It is only once I open a 2nd tab, or click on something else, that both pages than divert to the block link, Is this a bug?
🙂
Just to give a bit more detail on that first problem, it is not true of all my ‘Block Sets’. Just two of them. One of them blocks all websites using the expression .*.* The other one blocks everything .*.com Perhaps there’s something about those particular expressions that is not allowing me to edit them?
Sorry to have bombarded you with posts!!
chrome://extensions/ and chrome://* are both not working as blocked URLs … why?
I have deleted a block set, but it keeps blocking me.
What shall I do?
I would like to keep a block set available only for lockdown, however when I try to make the block set allowed for all time I get an error message saying “you can’t slack off all week”. A better option would be a warning message that says “you have just selected to slack off all week, is this what you intended?” or something like that. I want to creat a block set which is basically .*.com,
.*.org, .*.net. But I only want it to be implemented during lockdown, otherwise it would be too restrictive.
I want to add more urls to my blockset but have to type the challenge to be able to do that! I think that’s ridiculous. I thought this extension would make me more productive but its making me waste more time.
Uninstalled!
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I deleted a block set, but those websites are still on the “URLS ALLOWED NOW!” part of the pop-up. It’s not doing anything bad, but I’m very OCD about it. Is there any way to fix this? I swear I deleted that block!
Test Comment. Will this comment appear?
I have several blocksets with limited times, but the clock never counts down and therefore never blocks the sites – it displays “15 minutes left” in the URLS ALLOWED NOW! box even if I stay on the site for… you know… hours. What’s the problem?
I like the idea but this is impossible to configure when you first install since the lock text keeps triggering everytime I try to adjust the settings or add URLs. There REALLY needs to be a “are you done setting up Chrome Nanny and ready to start blocking” type of prompt….
I HATE THIS THING!!! I did’t even choose to get it, I just appeared on my computer without consent. I have tried multiple times to get rid of it, but I can’t! What is going on!?!
Why do I have enter such long text inorder to edit or delete a block set. very tiring.
How do you block all .com sites except youtube, from 12am-6am, But also block youtube from 8am-5pm? Clearly whitelist won’t work for this.
Is there any way for me to block YouTube and white list certain parts of YouTube?
Is there any way for me too white list only certain parts of a website?
Did you remove this from the chrome store? I can’t seem to find it there anymore.
Hi, the extension uses a very old version of Chrome extension API. Hence it is being screened by chrome app store. Unfortunately, I do not have time to update it. Sorry! There are many other alternatives available. Please take a look!