Blank

Browser extension to promote healthy relationship with web and prevent intrusive habits

Blank typing exercise screenshot

README.md (synced from GitHub)

Blank is a browser extension that intercepts navigation to selected web pages and asks you to type a short sequence of random words before continuing. It helps prevent doom scrolling, compulsive social media checks, and other habitual browsing. Comes with sensible defaults for common time-sink sites.

Install

Chrome

  1. Install from the Chrome Web Store.
  2. Complete the welcome page that appears after installation.

If the welcome page doesn’t appear, click the extension icon to open settings and configure Blank manually.

Firefox

Firefox support is available but Blank is not yet listed on AMO. Install from source (see below).

Build from source

Requires bash and zip.

./build.sh

This produces two archives in dist/:

  • blank-<version>-chrome.zip
  • blank-<version>-firefox.zip

Loading in Chrome

  1. Go to chrome://extensions.
  2. Enable “Developer mode” (top-right toggle).
  3. Click “Load unpacked” and select the dist/blank-<version>-chrome.zip file after extracting it, or extract it to a folder and point to that folder.

Loading in Firefox

  1. Go to about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox.
  2. Click “Load Temporary Add-on”.
  3. Select the dist/blank-<version>-firefox.zip file (or any file inside the extracted folder).

Note: temporary add-ons in Firefox are removed when the browser closes. For persistent installation, use about:config to set xpinstall.signatures.required to false, then install the .zip renamed to .xpi via about:addons.

License

MIT

Footnotes