FocusMe
Cold Turkey
Freedom.to
SelfControl
Forest App
Focus App
Stay Focused
LeechBlock
TranscriptFetch
SocialFetch.dev
TranscriptAPI.com
FocusMe is the most powerful website and app blocker available. Unlike browser extensions that can be easily disabled, FocusMe blocks at the system level across all browsers.
Key features: - Enforced Mode โ the strongest bypass protection of any website blocker - AI Productivity Coach โ personalized daily/weekly reports with one-click plan recommendations - Enforced Screen Breaks โ full-screen overlay with skip protection and minimum break times - Flexible Time Limits โ set per-site daily budgets (e.g. 30 min of Reddit per day) - Launch Limits โ restrict how many times per day you can open distracting apps - Pomodoro Timer โ built-in work/break cycles with floating timer window - CLI Automation โ start, stop, and list plans from the command line - Plan Library โ community templates you can import with one click - Block YouTube Shorts & Facebook Reels without blocking the rest of the site - Pause Limits, Stop Delays, Random Character Challenges, Plan Hardening
Works on Windows 11/10/8/7, macOS, Linux, and Android. Browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi.
Trusted by 10,000+ users. Rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot with 800+ reviews. Free trial available.
TranscriptFetch is one API for getting text out of video and web content.
Send a URL from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X or Facebook and get back clean, timestamped text. Send any web page and get clean Markdown. One endpoint, one response shape, one API key.
Most short-form video has no caption track to download. TikTok's auto-captions are opt-in per upload, Instagram never publishes a downloadable track, and a large share of captions on both platforms are burned into the video frames where no parser can read them.
When there is no caption track, TranscriptFetch transcribes the audio instead. Same endpoint, same response, so your code never branches on which method produced the text.
text field for feeding a model or a search indexsegments array with per-cue start times and durations, so subtitles and jump-to-moment links are a formatting step rather than another integration100 free credits on signup, no card required. One credit per successful response. Failed, blocked and empty results are never charged, which matters on short-form video where a meaningful share of any batch is music with no speech in it.
FocusMe TranscriptFetchNo TranscriptFetch videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.
TranscriptFetch's answer:
Most short-form video has no caption track to download. TikTokโs auto-captions are opt-in per upload, Instagram never publishes a downloadable track, and many captions on both are burned into the video frames where no parser can read them. TranscriptFetch transcribes the audio when no caption track exists, on the same endpoint, with the same response shape. Your code never branches on which method produced the text. It also covers YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook plus any web page as clean Markdown, so a pipeline spanning several sources is one integration rather than five.
TranscriptFetch's answer:
Three reasons. Coverage: one API key and one response shape across five video platforms and the open web, instead of stitching together a library per platform. Reliability: requests run through rotating infrastructure, so code that works locally keeps working from a server, which is where most open-source approaches break. Billing that matches reality: one credit per successful response, with failed, blocked and empty results never charged. That last point matters on short-form video, where a meaningful share of any batch is music with no speech in it. There is also an MCP server, so AI agents can fetch transcripts as a tool without a custom integration.
TranscriptFetch's answer:
Developers and technical teams building on video and web content. The common cases are RAG and retrieval pipelines that need video as text, AI agents that need to read a link mid-conversation, content teams repurposing short-form video at scale, and media monitoring and research tools. It is an API first, so the buyer is usually the person writing the integration rather than an end user. The free browser tools exist for one-off transcripts and for evaluating output quality before writing any code.
TranscriptFetch's answer:
It started with discovering there is no good way to get the text of a video. YouTubeโs official Data API will confirm a caption track exists and then refuse to hand it over, because captions.download requires the video ownerโs OAuth token. The popular open-source libraries work until you deploy them, at which point platforms start refusing datacenter IPs. And YouTube is the easy case: TikTok and Instagram publish no caption file at all. Every workaround solved one platform, worked locally, and broke in production. TranscriptFetch is the version that handles the failure cases as first-class behaviour rather than edge cases.
TranscriptFetch's answer:
Next.js with TypeScript and Tailwind on the front end and API layer, Clerk for auth with SHA-256 hashed API keys, Neon Postgres with Drizzle ORM, Redis for caching, and Stripe for billing. The extraction layer is a Python and FastAPI service. Speech-to-text uses Whisper-class models. The MCP server is published in the official Model Context Protocol registry with a DNS-verified namespace.
I have been using FocusMe software on all my PCs and phones for over six years. I have a paid license. I would really like to commend the developers of FocusMe. As someone who spends more than 8 hours a day at a computer, it is easy to let it take over your life, even to the point where I found myself watching, chatting and posting even when I didn't particularly want to. I wanted to take control, and FocusMe was a really good solution. FocusMe differed from other products because it handled the entire scope of the problem: 1) lock out stuff from my kids, 2) lock out some of the same stuff from me, 3) not interfere with special internet use (like GitHub, or work related youtube), and 4) to give a whole range of solutions for partial lockout, by time, location, overall usage, multiple password schemes, etc. They do a really good job protecting the software from anyone who might trying to hack around it. There really isn't anything like it.
Wow! Where should I start? I've been constantly searching in these two years for finding a complete solution that could really help me manage my digital distractions and focus on my daily life routines, most applications are either not effective enough, so easy to circumvent or very resource-intensive, then I found FocusMe!
1) It has everything I was searching for, most applications are not effective enough, some are just browser extensions, have a few options and not customizable enough, with FocusMe I can easily create very flexible plans to:
a) Destroy bad habits and create good ones. For example block Internet at a certain time of night to help me sleep at a certain time each night. This has helped my insomnia a lot and my sleep times are getting regulated now.
b) Block unnecessary and possible harmful contents completely. For example, it may be a personal choice but I choose to block online adult contents for most weekdays, which has helped my brain to regulate my dopamine system tremendously.
c) Time limit other contents during work days, Contents that are useful but can also easily waste a lot of your daily time if not careful enough, like emails, news, social media...
2) Most other applications can be circumvented easily, if you have a little computer knowledge, most of these applications are useless, but FocueMe! OMG! It goes to great lengths to make sure you stick to your plan, when you create and start a plan, you can't cheat it! You can even create punishment if you try to bypass your plan, to restrict your access more which can prevent any kind of future cheatings. It is evident that FocusMe creators really love what they do and really pay attention to details, which is what distinguishes this from most other similar applications.
3) Some other applications are very resource-intensive, you can see in windows task manager that they swallow all of your computer resources or even slow down your web surfing/loading experiences which makes them useless, because no one wants to have a slower computer just to have an application to control his/her daily habits, but when I use FocusMe, there are no computer/web surfing slow downs and also the resource consumption is minimal which also makes this software a great choice.
4) Last but not least, FocusMe has a superb support system, you never feel alone on your path to more success and focus, they are always there for you answering your questions and always updating the software to newer greater versions.
Let me emphasize this point: I don't know how I could live without this application and I wished I had found it sooner! Those that are searching for applications to help them live a healthier life know what I mean if they read my explanations above. It took me two years to find you, FocusMe! I would give you 10 stars if I could!
After all these years, I finally feel in control of my life and my time, Thank you.
It just all works properly unlike other softwares. I am very happy because if I have minor troubles, customer support is there the same day to help me fix it. A lot of good locking systems that so far I haven't been able to cheat.
Based on our record, FocusMe seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 11 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.
I would probably be homeless if it wasn't for FocusMe. I use it to block all sites except sites I need for work. Source: over 3 years ago
It's called FocusMe (https://focusme.com/). I came across some years ago when it was still a simple little app. You had to manually set it to block a site and enter in a time period. I had my daily working schedule that I use now set up and I wanted FocusMe to run on a schedule as well. He freaked out when I told him how I would use his app: killing the app via DOS at the end of a time period, renaming the... Source: over 3 years ago
How about Forest - https://www.forestapp.cc/ or FocusMe - https://focusme.com/. Source: over 3 years ago
I agree with the other answers that it is not your responsibility. For people that would like an efficient blocker for themselves, I used FocusMe during my time at ETH which works well. Source: almost 4 years ago
I don't know of any specific app that does what you want but you can mix it up across platforms. I track all my writing time with Toggl Track's free plan and I use Google Sheets for word count. If you're looking for distraction blockers I'd recommend Forest for your web browser if you want something free, but if you're willing to pay for something more powerful I recommend Freedom or the even more restrictive... Source: almost 4 years ago
Cold Turkey - Cold Turkey is a free productivity program that you can use to temporarily block distractions so that you can get your work done!
SocialFetch.dev - Social media scraping API for public profiles, posts, comments, videos, transcripts, and metrics from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, and more. Pay-as-you-go credits, 100 free to start.
Freedom.to - Freedom is a productivity hack that lets you block apps, websites or the entire Internet on iPhones, iPads, Windows and Mac computers.
TranscriptAPI.com - Get YouTube video transcripts with a simple API call or through Model Context Protocol. Fast, reliable, and easy to integrate into your applications.
SelfControl - V2 updates! - Custom time interval for distraction free mode - Ability to turn off ' always on' mode - Improved UI -- Self Control -- A simple app to keep you focused online by blocking sites that you spend way too much time on.
Forest App - Forest is an app that helps you stay focused on the important things in life.