______
|  ____|
| |__ ___   ___ _   _ ___
|  __/ _ \ / __| | | / __|
| | | (_) | (__| |_| \__ \
|_|  \___/ \___|\__,_|___/

    Focus is a command line utility to steal back your focus from distracting websites.

NOTE: Looking for an OS X app version of this? Check out http://www.heyfocus.com/

Focus is a small command line utility that blocks your favorite sites by adding rules to your firewall.

For example, if you need a break from the impulse of checking Gmail simply add mail.google.com to your $HOME/.focus file.

echo "mail.google.com" >> ~/.focus

Then enter focus mode:

> focus
Focusing...go be productive!

Now you're blocked from Gmail. Once you've accomplished some work and you want to switch back, simply unfocus:

> unfocus
Unfocusing..were you productive?

Focus is easy to get started with and is careful about clobbering your /etc/hosts file.

Install

Download the 3 scripts and make sure focus/unfocus are somewhere on your path.

Warning: I recommend backing up your /etc/hosts file first. Focus is careful (and backs up to /etc/hosts.bak automatically), but better safe than sorry.

Add some entries to $HOME/.focus

> cat $HOME/.focus
news.ycombinator.com
reddit.com
mail.google.com
digg.com
techmeme.com
techcrunch.com
mixpanel.com
twitter.com
api.twitter.com

Jump in and out of focus mode:

> focus
> ping mail.google.com
PING mail.google.com (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
....

> unfocus
> ping mail.google.com
PING mail.google.com (209.85.225.19): 56 data bytes
..

Focusing without a sudo password

Warning: Using visudo is an advanced topic and if you don't know what you're doing you might mess up your system.

Focus modifies your /etc/hosts file which requires a sudo password. If you want to get around entering this for every command, type sudo visudo and add the following line:

brad    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /Users/brad/Projects/focus/focus.sh                         

Replace brad with your username (whoami will help here) and /Users/brad/Projects/focus/focus.sh to the path of your focus.sh file.

You should now be able to use focus without entering your sudo password!

Contact

@bradjasper