freeblock

Block and unblock websites using the /etc/hosts hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows).

Freeblock blocks websites by adding entries with a 0.0.0.0 IP address so that they don't resolve.

installation

Go to Releases and download the latest release for your platform and architecture to somewhere on your PATH, e.g.:

wget 'https://github.com/kylrth/freeblock/releases/latest/download/freeblock-linux-amd64' -O - | sudo tee /usr/bin/freeblock > /dev/null
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/freeblock

usage

The freeblock binary has three subcommands:

• block accepts a list of domains to block. See freeblock block -h for more details about how it handles domains already present in the file.
• unblock accepts a list of domains to unblock. It does this by commenting out any lines that have that domain set to resolve to 0.0.0.0. Again, see freeblock unblock -h for details.
• open accepts a list of domains to temporarily unblock. It does the same thing as unblock but then waits until it's killed (with either SIGINT or SIGTERM) to re-block the domains. Currently, open re-blocks the domains by restoring the old version of the file, so any changes made to the hosts file while open is running will be lost.

time ranges

If you add a comment to a line in /etc/hosts like this:

0.0.0.0 www.reddit.com  #freeblock:09-17 # Don't get distracted!

freeblock will not unblock Reddit between 9am and 5pm. Only hours are supported, not minutes.