Freedom

Slightly too simplistic, and the sessions page is confusing/needs a redesign. Cold Turkey is more useful and powerful, although it lacks a mobile app.

The idea is good, cross-platform block sessions. The app on phone is bearable, haven't used it much but it probably fulfills what it promised. But the experience on Windows really sucks. First, it's almost useless. It not only doesn't block you, it even doesn't work from the beginning if you don't do a bit of setting.

If you want to bypass the blocker, there are numerous effortless ways: use a proxy, switch to another browser, uninstall the addon from the browser, kill the process from task manager, or even just exit the program. It's just ridiculous. It doesn't even contribute anything and I will finally have to fallback to rely on my own willpower. Why do I need such a thing in this way?

Those problems of other functionalities and interface designs are not worth mentioning, comparing to these problems.

This app really need some improvements, if it's not completely unusable. The idea is great. But if you really want a helpful app, use cold turkey.

[Edited by dspjm, August 21]

It's one of the few distraction blockers that has both proxy and non-proxy blocking methods. However, it has some limitations/loopholes too. It is limited in the browsers it supports, among the popular browsers. For example, it effectively doesn't support opera browser because, strangely, unlike other blockers, it has no non-vpn (non-proxy) support for opera at least on mac os. The proxy method support for opera is effectively useless, since opera browser has free VPN built into it.

Paid for the lifetime subscription, has been awesome for my productivity and giving me a nudge to focus while on my PC and android phone!

Freedom supports website exceptions on Mac — but not iPhone. On the other hand, Screen Time for iPhone supports, “Allowed Websites Only.”

https://freedom.to/blog/introducing-website-exceptions-for-mac-new-in-freedom-2-0/

syncs for computer and mobile device! + could set multiple filter groups (and activate them separately + scheduling).

edit: super heavy cpu load if you are blocking many sites... Cold Turkey app works far better in this regard.

You can use the code "UPGRADENOW" to get 20% off, for a total of 20 bucks for an entire year, but I now want a refund at the time I am writing this?

Why? It doesn't have an Android app support now, and on their windows client it doesn't have URL exceptions like it is on Mac.

Other than that, I like how it performs and the UX, and the responsive customer service.

Will upgrade and rate 5 once those issues are addressed.