Website Blocker for Chrome

A website blocker for Chrome is a browser extension that limits or blocks the sites you choose; the most useful ones pair a hard blocklist with per-site daily time limits and add friction, like a short pause before a site opens, so you control both access and duration instead of relying on a single on/off switch.

What a Chrome website blocker should actually do

A good website blocker does more than slam a door in your face. The sites that eat your day — social feeds, news, YouTube, shopping — are engineered to pull you back, and a single on/off switch is easy to argue your way around. What actually helps is a set of small, visible boundaries: a daily budget for each distracting site, limits that apply only when you need them, and a brief pause that catches the reflex before it turns into 40 lost minutes.

MonkeyBlocker takes this approach in Chrome by pairing a hard blocklist with per-site time limits, rather than relying on a single on/off switch. It runs entirely inside Chrome and Chromium-based browsers, keeps your data on your device, and works without an account.

Why simple blocklists often fail

Most people start with an all-or-nothing blocklist, and most people abandon it within a week, because total blocks collide with real life. You need YouTube for a tutorial, or a social site for work, so you disable the block "just for a second" — and it never comes back on. The problem was never that the block was too weak. It was too blunt. Distraction is rarely a conscious decision; your fingers type the URL before your brain catches up. That is why friction beats force for most people.

A friction stack, not a single switch

Instead of one setting, MonkeyBlocker gives you a stack of controls you can layer to fit the situation:

• Daily time limits — give each distracting site a daily budget. When it is spent, the site is done for the day. (Pain: too much time on one site.)
• Smart schedules — apply limits only when they matter, like work hours, and leave your free time free.
• Floating timer — a subtle on-page countdown so the limit never surprises you.
• Impulse Check — a short, mindful pause before a distracting site opens. Most reflex visits end there.
• Scroll Stopper — breaks endless feeds into deliberate stopping points instead of infinite drift.
• Social Cleaner — hide Shorts, Reels, homepages and recommendation rails while keeping the parts of a site you actually came for.
• Accountability Partner — notify a chosen person about usage or broken rules when external commitment helps.
• Usage statistics — daily and weekly trends that show exactly where your attention leaks.
• Hard blocklist — for sites that do not deserve negotiation, block them completely with no countdown.
• Settings Lock — require a typed sentence before settings or time limits can be changed.
• Auto-Lockout — log out of social sites after time expires, so bypassing a limit means signing in again.

You do not need all of them. Most people start with a limit or two and a schedule, then escalate only where a gentle boundary is not enough.

Example setup for work hours

A realistic configuration: put a 15-minute daily limit on your two worst offenders, wrap it in a schedule that runs 9am to 6pm on weekdays, turn on the floating timer so you can see the budget draining, and add an Impulse Check to the sites you open on autopilot. Anything you never need during work — a specific game or forum — goes on the hard blocklist. That is a two-minute setup that survives real days.

Privacy and no-account use

MonkeyBlocker stores its usage data locally in your browser. There is no account to create and nothing to sign into. The whole point is to protect your attention without turning your browsing into someone else's dataset.

When it is not the right fit

Honesty matters more than a hard sell. MonkeyBlocker is a Chrome and Chromium browser extension, so it does not block apps on your phone or lock your entire operating system. If you need enforced cross-device blocking across iOS and Android, or unbreakable desktop lockdown, a system-level tool is a better match — see where each one fits in our guide to choosing a website blocker. If your main battleground is the browser on your computer, this is built exactly for that.

Add to Chrome — free
No account, no credit card, about a 2-minute setup. Works in Chrome and Chromium browsers like Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Arc.

Related reading: using it as a productivity extension, taming YouTube Shorts, and scheduling social media during work.