anchor-scroll-reel-blocker by athul

The infinite scroll. It's dangerously easy to scroll mindlessly for hours, especially when it comes to social media.

So what if we playfully visualised infinite scrolling as a deep sea dive, to help people experience their scrolling habit more tangibly?

Anchor is a browser extension which plays on this feeling of sinking. The further down you scroll, the deeper you dive — and you can watch as your screen slowly turns a dark blue, a little fish swims across your screen, and finally, you hit a (literal) rock bottom.

In this version, we have integrated mindful interventions right at the front gate, styled with clean vanilla architectures. When you open a target distracting website, Anchor pauses your access, directing your focus back to the real world before habits take over.

All our code is available on GitHub for you to play with and evolve.
Install on firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/anchor-scroll-reel-blocker/

• Virtual Sinking: Watch the screen turn deep blue as you scroll past your buffer zone. A depth marker counts your meters until you hit rock bottom and scrolling blocks.
• Short-Form Video Blocker (Reels, Shorts, TikTok): Automatically detects and tracks swiping on YouTube Shorts (/shorts/), Instagram Reels (/reels/ or /reel/), and TikTok (tiktok.com). Swiping to a new video increases your watched count and moves the depth meter down. Once you hit your configured limit, downward swiping/scrolling is fully blocked (via mouse wheel, keys, and touchscreen gestures), but you can still swipe back up to previously watched content.
• Performance Profiles: Toggle animation density (High, Low, or None) to save CPU/battery.

Anchor intercepts your access immediately upon visiting target websites and prompts you to pause:
* Breathing Exercise (Classic): Guided inhale/exhale cycles showing custom breathing phrases, dynamic typography-based scale transitions, and your 24h attempts statistics.
* Breathing Exercise (Minimal): A quiet, clean, textless circle pulse to calm your attention.
* Type Random Text / Math Puzzles: Focus-deflecting friction tasks that force you to type verification codes or solve math equations. If a mistake is made, it instantly resets and generates a new puzzle.
* Healthy Alternatives: Reminds you to read, stretch, or walk, with a delay timer if you choose to proceed.
* State Your Intention: Forces you to checklist why you are opening the site, giving warning prompts for mindless browsing.


A top navigation SPA dashboard (dashboard.html) managing everything:
* Overview Stats: Displays prevented attempts, time saved, 24h history, and annualized savings.
* Dynamic Websites List: Interactive list of blocked websites. Includes an enter-to-add search bar.
* Domain Details View: Click any site in the breakdown to view its specific attempts history and toggle app-specific settings (such as customizing breathing duration, re-intervention timing, and sinking/reel blocker behavior).

• Completing an intervention opens a full-screen time selector by default. Slide to select exactly how long you need the site, up to the configured re-intervention timer maximum, and Anchor will check back in after that period.

• Break infinite scroll loops with automatic re-intervention check-ins, enabled by default for all blocked sites. Anchor uses the timed visit slider duration for the active visit, capped by the configured re-intervention timer, then shows an animated hourglass SVG screen. Choose to close the tab or undergo another mindful pause.

• The extension popup menu displays the attempts count for the active website in the last 24h. It features a contextual quick-action button at the bottom: Exclude [domain] or Block [domain] dynamically depending on the current tab location and operating mode.