Most site blockers are all or nothing. I wanted to cut out social media feeds without losing the messaging that I actually use them for, and nothing I found could do that.
What it does
- Add a site to block, then list the paths on it that are still allowed
- Leave the list empty to block the whole site
- Land on a blocked page and you're sent to the first allowed page, with a small notice explaining why, or to a block screen if the whole site is off-limits
For example, blocking all of Facebook, and all of Instagram except the explore and messaging pages.
How it works
It's a Manifest V3 extension with no build step: a popup to manage the block list, saved in chrome.storage, and a content script that runs at document_start on every page. The content script matches the hostname (including subdomains and www.) against the list and checks the current path against the allowed routes before the page has a chance to load.
The tricky part was single-page apps. Instagram changes pages without a full reload, so a content script that only runs on page load would miss most navigation. The extension wraps history.pushState and replaceState, listens for back and forward, and keeps a light polling fallback, so it re-checks the path whenever it changes.
I also got it running on my phone by sideloading the packed .crx into Edge Canary with developer mode on, which was a fun puzzle in itself.