Free · Native macOS · No Tracking
Block any website on macOS — and it stays blocked, even if you drag the app to the Trash.
10 lock types, optional AI focus assistant, Safari + Chrome + Edge + Brave + Opera + Vivaldi extensions. Free forever for the core blocker. macOS 13 Ventura or later.
No credit card. $5 to keep after 14 days. · v1.8.11 · Universal binary · Apple-notarized
A website blocker for Mac needs to do exactly two things well: block the sites you tell it to, and stay blocked when your motivated brain looks for a loophole at 11pm. Most blockers nail the first half. Almost none nail the second.
FocusDragon is built around the second half. The block runs in a background system daemon, not inside the visible .app bundle — so quitting the app doesn't lift the block, and dragging the app to the Trash triggers a silent restore from a hidden backup within five seconds. Combined with ten distinct lock types and an optional AI assistant that watches your screen for drift, it's the only Mac blocker that takes the “moment of weakness” failure mode seriously.
And the entire core — unlimited blocks, every lock type, all six browser extensions — is free forever. The AI focus assistant is the only paid feature, and it's opt-in.
The three other names in this category and where each one falls short. Comparisons are based on the currently shipping versions as of mid-2026.
| Feature | FocusDragon | Cold Turkey | Freedom | SelfControl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier with unlimited blocks | Yes | Limited | No (paid only) | Yes |
| Number of lock types | 10 | 3 | 1 (timer) | 1 (timer) |
| Survives drag-to-Trash uninstall | Yes | No | No | No |
| AI focus assistant (vision-based) | Optional | No | No | No |
| Safari + Chrome + Edge + Brave extensions | Yes | Partial | Partial | No |
| App blocking (not just websites) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Schedule blocks (recurring windows) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Random-text / typing challenge lock | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Native Apple-Silicon binary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Active development (latest release) | May 2026 | 2024 | Ongoing | 2020 (frozen) |
Cold Turkey and Freedom are mature, well-engineered products and either is a reasonable pick if you want a decade of track record over the things FocusDragon does differently. SelfControl is free and open source but hasn't had a meaningful update since 2020 and lacks browser-extension support entirely.
The pattern is the same every time. You install a blocker on Monday with the determination of a person who has just lost an afternoon to Reddit. The block holds for a week. Then, late on a Sunday night, you remember that the “disable” button takes one click.
Mac website blockers tend to fail in three specific ways, and a serious blocker has to address all three:
If turning the block off is as cheap as turning it on, the block's effective strength equals the strength of your weakest moment that day. Every serious blocker needs a friction layer — a timer, a password, a typing challenge — that's expensive enough to interrupt the autopilot.
Most blockers store all their enforcement inside the visible .app bundle in /Applications. Drag the app to the Trash and the block dies with it. Even a long timer is a 30-second uninstall away from gone.
A blocker that lives only inside Safari can be defeated by opening Chrome. A blocker that lives only in Chrome can be defeated by switching to Brave. Real blocking needs to run system-wide — at the network layer — so a different browser doesn't mean a different rulebook.
FocusDragon's entire architecture is a response to those three failure modes. Lock types address #1, the tamper-proof daemon addresses #2, and the system-level Network Extension plus six browser extensions address #3.
Pick the lock that matches the temptation. The lighter ones are for habits you're building, the heavier ones are for things you cannot afford to negotiate with.
Block runs for a set duration — 25 min for a Pomodoro, 4 hours for a deep-work session — and unlocks itself at the end. The simplest lock and the easiest to bypass, which is exactly the point: it's a nudge, not a chain.
Block activates automatically during a recurring window — 9am to 5pm weekdays, all weekend, Sunday evening reset. No daily setup, no willpower budget spent every morning. The block just exists when it needs to.
When you try to unblock during an active session, FocusDragon shows a full-screen countdown — 30 seconds, 2 minutes, your choice — before the unblock takes effect. Enough time to remember why you set the block in the first place.
You get a fixed number of breaks per block — say, 3 — and once you've used them, the block is locked until the timer ends. Honest about being human, brutal about the cap.
Pick a future date — "after my exam," "after this sprint," "after my contract ends." Block holds until midnight of that date. No countdown to negotiate with, just a wall you placed yourself.
Block stays on until you've completed a set number of focused sessions — like a Pomodoro that you can't cheat. Couples the block to actual work output, not just clock time.
FocusDragon generates a long random string — 50, 100, 500 characters — and refuses to unblock until you type it back exactly. Custom text variant lets you set your own gauntlet ("I promised myself I would not open this site during work"). 60 seconds of forced reflection beats any willpower override.
Set a password (or have a friend set one) at block creation. Need it to unlock early. If you forget it during a moment of weakness, the block holds. Particularly effective combined with a long auto-generated password you intentionally don't memorize.
Unblocking requires N full restarts of your Mac. Each restart breaks flow on whatever you were rationalizing your way into. The friction isn't cruel — it's just enough delay to break the dopamine loop.
The hardest lock. Set it and you cannot turn it off — not by force-quitting, not by reinstalling, not by reading documentation. It will only unlock on the date you specified at creation. Use sparingly. Use deliberately.
FocusDragon's defining feature is the one nobody else ships: when you drag the app to the Trash during an active locked block, the block doesn't go away. The app comes back.
The trick is that FocusDragon isn't really one piece of software. It's three:
/Library/Application Support/FocusDragon/app-backup/ and restores it within seconds if the bundle disappears during an active block.Try it: install FocusDragon, start a 1-hour Timer Lock, then drag FocusDragon.app to the Trash and empty it. The app reappears in your Applications folder within 5 seconds. The block stays enforced the entire time.
(When no block is active, the watchdog does the opposite — if the bundle stays missing for 30 seconds, the daemon cleanly removes itself. So a legitimate uninstall still works, but a panic uninstall mid-block doesn't.)
The free website blocker is the headline product. The paid tiers add the AI focus assistant, which is a different beast entirely.
More questions on the full FAQ page.
Yes. The core blocker — unlimited blocks, all 10 lock types, Safari and Chrome extensions, system-level enforcement that survives uninstall — is free forever. Paid tiers add the AI focus assistant and power-user features, but you can block every website you want without paying anything.
FocusDragon ships 10 lock types vs Cold Turkey's 3, Freedom's 1, and SelfControl's 1. It runs a background daemon that keeps blocks enforced even when the app is closed or dragged to the Trash. It has a free tier (Freedom is paid-only, Cold Turkey's free version is limited). And it adds an optional AI focus assistant that reads your screen at short intervals and force-quits distractions in real time — none of the others have that.
If you drag FocusDragon.app to the Trash during an active locked block, a background daemon detects it within seconds and restores the app from a hidden backup. Three independent persistence tiers — user preferences, a root-owned daemon config, and a LaunchDaemon plist — work together so that nothing short of an explicit unlock turns off your blocks. This makes FocusDragon meaningfully harder to bypass than blockers that live entirely inside their .app bundle.
macOS 13 Ventura and later, on both Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) and Intel Macs. The app is a universal binary, signed with Apple's Developer ID and notarized by Apple before every release.
For full-strength blocking, FocusDragon requests Accessibility (to detect distracting apps), Screen Recording (only when the AI focus assistant is enabled — it reads the screen to classify your work), and Network Extension (to block at the system level even outside browsers). For website-only blocking inside Safari or Chrome, you only need to install the browser extension — no system permissions required.
Yes. Add any domain to a block — youtube.com, tiktok.com, reddit.com, x.com, instagram.com — and FocusDragon enforces it across Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi. There's also a built-in Doomscroll preset that hard-blocks short-form feeds (TikTok FYP, IG Reels, YouTube Shorts) without you needing to type each one in.
Yes. Add any Mac app — Slack, Discord, Twitter clients, games, Safari itself if you want — to a block, and FocusDragon force-quits it whenever the block is active. App blocking uses the same lock types as website blocking, so you can put a 4-hour timer on League of Legends or a random-text gate on Discord during work hours.
Each lock controls how (or whether) you can disable a block before it ends. Timer waits a set duration. Schedule waits for the next allowed window. Random Text requires you to type a long random string verbatim. Password requires a password you set. Restart requires N Mac reboots. Frozen blocks until a specific date with zero override. Date unlocks on a calendar date you pick. Delay forces a countdown before each unblock. Breakable allows N breaks then locks. Sessions counts active focus sessions. Pick the friction that matches the temptation.
AI Focus is $4.99/month or $39/year (founding price — saves 35%). AI Focus Max is $14.99/month or $149/year and adds Strict enforcement (every drift force-quits), stronger anti-bypass, longer history, and weekly reports. Both tiers include 100+ hours/month of vision monitoring. The plain website blocker is free; the AI is an opt-in upgrade.
Not yet. FocusDragon is Mac-first — every enforcement layer is built on macOS-specific APIs (LaunchDaemon, Network Extension, App Group entitlements, Safari Web Extensions). A Windows port would require rewriting the enforcement core. iOS companion app is in beta as of mid-2026.
Download FocusDragon free. Set up your first block in under a minute. The next time you reach for the site you said you wouldn't visit, your Mac will agree with you.
No credit card. $5 to keep after 14 days. · v1.8.11 · macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon & Intel