mhgbrg/blk

A simple bash scripts that makes it a breeze to block distracting websites.

blk

A simple bash script that makes it a breeze to block distracting websites.

Installation

brew tap mhgbrg/homebrew-tap
brew install blk

To block websites blk adds a line to the computer's hosts file that redirects the website to localhost. Depending on the permissions on your hosts file, you might need to run the script with sudo. If you don't want to use sudo, you can change the permissions of the hosts file with chmod 646 /etc/hosts so that your user gets permission to write (this makes using the script so much more convenient).

Also make sure you have enabled the atrun daemon if you want to use automatic blocking/unblocking. See requirements for more info.

Usage

To block a few websites:

blk block news.ycombinator.com www.facebook.com www.youtube.com

Since this is the most common action, the block keyword can be omitted:

blk news.ycombinator.com www.facebook.com www.youtube.com

To unblock:

blk unblock news.ycombinator.com www.facebook.com www.youtube.com

You can also block/unblock for a limited time period:

blk news.ycombinator.com for 2 hours

Or until a specific time:

blk news.ycombinator.com until 21:00

To view all blocked and temporary unblocked websites, use the list command:

blk list

To unblock all currently blocked websites, use the unblock command with the all parameter:

blk unblock all

You can also block all websites in a predefined file by using the block command with the all parameter:

blk block all

Or simply blk all (since block can be omitted). This command reads sites from the file ~/.blk-list. If you want to use a different file, set the environment variable BLK_LIST to its path. For example, putting export BLK_LIST=~/.distracting-websites.txt in your .bashrc or .zshrc will make the above command use ~/.distracting-websites.txt:

You can also feed sites to blk through stdin, for example:

echo "news.ycombinator.com" | blk
blk < ~/.distracting-websites.txt

Requirements

To use blk you need to have bash installed. I would recommend updating to the latest version if you haven't.

To use the for and until functionality you need to have the at command installed and working. On macOS at is installed per default, but the atrun daemon is not running. To fix this, run launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist and restart your computer (see man atrun for more info).

License

MIT

blk's Issues

Show if websites are blocked for or until a time in blk list

Right now there is no indication whether a website is blocked for 2 seconds or eternally. This should be shown when using blk list.

To do this the information could be saved after '# blk' in the hosts file. For example '# blk until 17.30'.

Another interesting thing could be to also show sites that are unblocked for or until a certain time. Information about this is currently not saved in the hosts file, but it could be stored in commented out lines. Another solution is to save a file with state in the user's home folder with this information.

Add an open source license to the repo

MIT is probably the best.

Write tests

The functionality of blk is beginning to get too big to manually test each time some change is made. I don't know if writing tests for bash scripts are considered good practice (or if it's just an indication of that your script is beginning to get too large...), but it is something that could be looked into.

Look over the design of the script

Right now the solution is kind of a mishmash of multiple solutions. Look through the script and rethink all design decisions.

Look through Google's styleguide for shell scripts

https://google.github.io/styleguide/shell.xml

Redirect websites to to-do list

lol

Update readme

Remove need for using sudo

It is a drag to always have to use sudo for blocking or unblocking websites. Can sudo be incorporated in the script in some way?

Maybe it is as easy as adding a section in the readme about changing the permission of the hosts file.

Split script up into two parts - block and unblock

Remove the need for the "block" keyword when blocking websites

block should be the default action of the script. Blocking a website should be as easy as typing blk news.ycombinator.com.

Give the script a new name

'block' doesn't cut it anymore. The script needs a new, more personal name.

Use a linter to check for code errors

I don't know anything about bash, so there are probably a whole lot of errors in the code. Using a linter would teach me more about bash and help me fix some of these errors.

Leverage more of at's power

at can take arguments such as now + 2 minutes. Right now the script only parses one parameter after the keyword until. Maybe it could be worth it to parse any extra parameters to leverage the complete power of at.

Go through the code and clean it up

Remove sudo from the command, and instead make users use sudo when running

This will hopefully fix the issue when using timed blocks and the sudo session has timed out before the scheduled unblock is run.

Ability to block and unblock websites for a fixed time period

Prettier output

Right now the script outputs one line for each website blocked or unblocked. It would probably be nicer to just output one line for all websites, or something similar.

Make it easier to block websites

It is a hassle to have to supply the -s flag each time a site is blocked. Could this be make easier? Maybe the first argument always have to be the site that is blocked or unblocked.

Using `until` for several websites at once fails

When using until for several websites at once, only one of the websites are blocked/unblocked at the specified time. This is because the at-jobs both try to edit the hosts-file at the same time, which results in only one of the succeeding.

Put the script online somewhere

Homebrew?

Publish blk to Show HN

Add support for configuration

For example you could configure where sites should be redirected when blocked.

Add command to unblock all sites

Feature for specifying exact time for block/unblock

For example block news.ycombinator.com until 13:37.

Make it possible to unblock-all for or until a certain time

Same functionality as with a regular unblock.

Use natural language instead of flags

Blocking a website for 10 minutes could for example be done with the command block news.ycombinator.com for 10 minutes.

Redirect to other sites served by HTTPS

Right now when redirecting a site to another site served by HTTPS the certificate for the site redirected to is not valid, since the url in the browser doesn't match the url for the certificate. True redirects are not supported by the hosts file, so the easiest solution to this problem would probably be to redirect to a local web server that can redirect to the correct site.

This web server would have to run on the default port, since you can't specify which port to redirect to in the hosts file.

Some websites redirect to several IP:s according to dig

How do I know which one to take?

Redirection to other website fails when redirecting sites not starting with www

For example, when redirecting news.ycombinator.com to www.facebook.com the browser gets pointed to news.facebook.com, which results in a 404.

Handle incorrect usage

Show a help message for how to use the script when an incorrect command is issued.

Look for a way to generalise block/unblock functions

block_for and unblock_for for example are nearly identical. Can they be made more general to reduce code duplication?

Command to list currently blocked websites

Make it possible to pipe sites to blk (again)

Piping of websites was removed when the flags to the script were redone. This is a nice feature, so it should be put back in.

Feature to allow blocking of several websites at once

Maybe you could set up a "quick list" for easy blocking of all websites that distract you.

Tab autocompletion for websites

Update readme

The way the script is used has been changed and the examples in the readme needs to be updated.