Mute

Instantly disable websites on a local machine, underneath all browsers.

Version 1 / 2023-12-28

Pre-Requisites

• Python 3

Installation & Setup

1. Clone or download this repository.
2. For the script to work, you must enable read and write file permissions for the user that will use this, on the hosts file of the computer that will use this. Every OS has this file.

On Windows: C:\\Windows\\System32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts
On Linux: /etc/hosts

What does this do?

The host file on your computer tells web browsers if they need to re-route to a specific IP address for a given domain name, and it's typically used to add aliases to locally networked devices. What Silencer does, is it uses Python to quickly and easily toggle the contents of that file between the default file and a custom file filled with new routes. This will not affect your web browsing for any websites you do not specify. The file titled hosts default is a copy of Microsoft's default host file. It is recommended to leave this file alone. For Linux users, this won't affect you as Linux's default host file is empty, or close to it, and both operating systems use the file the same way. The file titled hosts silenced is a list of websites you want to prevent this computer from reaching. The contents of that file in this repository are just examples.

How to Use

Fill the contents of hosts silenced with a list of websites you wish to silence, preceded by the home IP address of 127.0.0.1. Just make sure to keep the format, I'm not sure why you need to do it twice but that's how it works. Format:

127.0.0.1 www.website.com
127.0.0.1 website.com

silencer.py is responsible for turning the switch. Because all the program does is toggle the hosts list, the effects last until you switch it back. There's no background program or anything. There are multiple ways to do this.

• Manually on Linux: run: python3 silencer.py on to turn on, python3 silencer off to turn off.
• Manually on Windows: run: python silencer.py on to turn on, python silencer off to turn off.
• Cmd shortcut on Windows: Double click silence.cmd to turn on, unsilence.cmd to turn off.

Credits

All code written by telekrex. Please report any security vulnerabilities to telekrex@gmail.com.