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Ask HN: Is there an OS-level screen reader that blocks distractions?
2 points by keenmaster on Sept 15, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


Sorry for the late reply:

Not at the OS level, but I’ve built a chrome extension that does this.

I had a hard time focusing in grad school. I’d be watching YouTube lectures or reading a Reddit thread on a subject I was studying, and all of a sudden It was like I’d blink and be watching some comedy video or browsing r/funny.

Rather than simply blacklist sites, The chrome extension I built uses a topic model to block webpages. You input the topics you need to focus on (for me it was often computer science and math), and the extension will block webpages, YouTube vids and Reddit threads unrelated to those topics.

You can check it out at ( https://GetOnTopic.com )


Be more specific.

Perhaps "kiosk mode" software so you can only run certain app(s)?


More like a kiosk mode where you can only engage in productive activity. You'd get to define "productive" as well as the time of day where you can only engage in productive tasks.

The distinction is that some apps, like Chrome, can be used for both productive and unproductive activities.




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