Sieve 1.3.0 — Game Blocker, Usage Insights & Search Result Filter

Three new modules, and a much richer syntax for your own blocked-sites list.
Everything new here is off by default and, as always, nothing leaves your
device.

Game Blocker

A new section under Site Blocking, over a curated 97-domain list split into
four switches you turn on separately:

• Browser game portals (35 domains) — Poki, CrazyGames, CoolMathGames and the big .io games. This switch also blocks the shared host most portals serve their games from, so games embedded on other pages stop loading too.
• Game download stores (27) — Steam, Epic, GOG, itch.io, console storefronts.
• Game platforms & online worlds (20) — Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite.
• Game streaming, cloud gaming & esports (15) — Twitch, Kick, now.gg.

Game blocking is browser-only, and the settings page says so plainly: Sieve
can block game sites and store pages, but it cannot see or stop a game already
installed on the computer, and nothing on a console. Blocking a store stops new
games being browsed and bought.

Blocked game sites get their own wording naming the switch to turn off, and the
Allowlist and Guardian Lock work here exactly as they do everywhere else.

Usage Insights

An opt-in, local screen-time report, in its own section:

• Your total for today or the week, and how it compares with the day or week before.
• A curve of your day hour by hour (or the week day by day) — hover or use the arrow keys to read any point.
• Your busiest hour, and which sites took the time.

It only counts the tab you are actually looking at, so two windows of the same
site are never counted twice, and the clock stops when you switch to another
app, lock the screen, or step away for a few minutes. Reading a long page still
counts.

Privacy: off until you switch it on. It records site names and durations
only — no URLs, no page titles, no page content, nothing uploaded. Extension
pages, the new-tab page, local files and private windows are never counted.
Choose how long to keep it (7, 30 or 90 days) and clear it whenever you like.
Turning the feature off stops new measurements; Clear history is what erases
what is already there. See PRIVACY.md.

Search Result Filter

A new section under Browsing that sorts your search results before you
click, on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo:

• Colour the sources you trust so they stand out; hide the ones you never want to see. Each rule carries its own colour from a palette you choose.
• Rules take the syntax you already know: example.com for a site and its subdomains, .edu for a whole domain ending, example.com/docs/* for one part of a site, or a /regex/. Pasting a list you keep elsewhere works as-is.
• Nothing disappears silently. Hidden results are counted under the search box with a link to show them, dimmed and outlined so they are never mistaken for normal results.
• Sites on your Blocked list are hidden from results too, since those links only lead to the blocked page. That can be switched off on its own.
• Every result Sieve touches carries a small “?” — click it to see exactly which rule did it, what that rule did, and whether it came from your Search Result Filter rules or your global Blocked list. When several rules match one result, the one that actually decided the outcome is marked. The popup also offers “Show on this page” for a hidden result (a one-off reveal that changes nothing in your settings) and a link straight to the rules.

Custom block rules

Blocked sites now takes far more than a domain:

Form	Example
Wildcard host	*.example.com
Path	example.com/adult/*
Whole top-level domain	.xyz
Regex on the address	/example\.(net|org)/
Regex on the page title	title/Example Domain/
Note / section heading	# Work distractions

• Patterns are checked when you save. One that will not compile, that uses a flag which would make it match only every other time, that is slow enough to freeze pages, or that the browser cannot use to block a page, is refused with the reason.
• Lines starting with # or ! are notes: ignored when matching, and they stay above the entries written under them when the list is sorted, so they work as section headings.
• A site on your blocked list is now also blocked as a source of pictures: its results are hidden in image search, and its images are hidden wherever they appear on other sites.
• The two pattern forms act at different moments, and the settings page says which is which: an address pattern stops the page before it loads at all; a page title is not known until the page has been read, so a title pattern lets it appear for a moment and then replaces it.
• A whole top-level domain blocks pages but is deliberately not applied to every image, script and request on every site you visit, which would slow all of them down. Pictures from a blocked TLD are hidden by the page instead.
• Pasting or importing a list accepts all the same forms, and the box now shows one example of each rather than leaving you to find out a rejected line at a time.
• The Allowlist still takes plain domains only, and now says so: an allow rule has to be certain which site it is opening up. The richer forms belong to Blocked sites.

Doomscroll Stopper takes your own sites

Type a domain under Focus and it gets its own row, its own daily time limit
and the same pause screen as the built-in feeds. Subdomains are included, and
tracking starts on tabs you already have open.

Removing a site you added clears its limit and its history with it, so adding
the same domain back later starts clean. Removing one asks for your lock, like
every other change that weakens your protection.

Under the hood

• New npm test suite (node --test): blocklist patterns, custom block rules, search-filter matching, SERP parsing, and the usage store and tracker.
• Two new permissions, both in service of the above and both explained in PRIVACY.md: idle (Usage Insights only — stops the clock when you step away or lock the screen; it reports how long since you touched the keyboard or mouse, never what you typed) and scripting.
• Privacy policy and README updated to cover Usage Insights, the Game Blocker and the Search Result Filter.

Upgrading

Settings carry over. Every new feature in this release is off until you turn it
on, so a fresh update behaves exactly like 1.2.0 until you visit the options
page.

Full changelog: v1.2.0...v1.3.0