Productivity Owl

Edit: Changed to 1 star because of how invasive this extension is. I was loading data on a new site which I hadn't saved and the chrome extension was trying to force it to close no matter what. I ended up losing my data and unable to recover it. Very invasive and annoying when trying to incorporate in everyday life too. Pros: * Blocks unlimited sites * Sets time limits * Uses psychology to help you be more productive when you're distracted Cons: * Sets time limit for all sites, making you manually type which sites you don't want. This gets annoying very fast. * Relies entirely on the built in task creator for their 'respect' program - I have my own systems for this. Screw off. * You only get free time if you use their task creator. * Is only effective if you utilize their task creator which many people may not want to use. * Is not personalized - Why doesnt the owl have personalty? Why cant you make excuses to the owl? Why is there no communication between the owl? Overview: * There is a lot of missed potential in this app. The developer refuses to listen to users and therefore will maintain a low rating. Has not been maintained for many years. Essentially a average parental control extension marketed as productivity.

Error handling response: ReferenceError: respsonse is not defined at chrome-extension://eoagmdboiealblmpaahjlhajggndaahi/contentscript.js:128:7 Edit: still not fixed

it sucks!!!! no wikipedia and a student can hack it supereasy

Good concept, not working. It started closing pages by itself. Not pages that I set as denied but random pages. Deleting it now.

I hated the fact that one have to set up a white list of websites. I may spent time of various websites due to work/study. And these sites may differ according to the project that I'm working on. It was annoying to add every work/study site to a owl's white list. I'd atleast do it if that was something easy to do. Everytime you want to add a site to a white list, you have to oepn the app and add it. That is the only reason I'm giving it a star. Although it is just one reason, that one reason was enough for me to remove the app from my Chrome after about an hour. I mean, how would you feel if owl closes down every site that you go for work/study purposes? PS : I personally think that only a blocked list of sites would be enough to make an extension like this work

This is the worst thing ever!!!! remove it from my computer

take it off

I absolutely hate this sooo much. This has completely shut down my computer it wont let me undownload it or change my settings to stop deleting my tabs. They delete everything not just the stuff i told it to. VERY disappointed :( if this doesn't stop soon i might need to go and pay for some one to debug this :( :( :(

i cant uninstall it

it would not let me use free time

it only lets me get on a website for 30 sec.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT

i never downloaded this program. it just showed up on my google chrome account. i makes doing college work a real problem. someone better help me uninstall this program. this program makes me not want to use google chrome anymore.

kinda want to uninstall

I LOVE this extension, but I can't find my way back to the website that let me change my schedule and stuff, so now it's useless!

no way to fast accept site, need to go to config and TYPE full url of website... good idea, but unusable

It keeps shutting my windows every time, even if I use the ones I added as the exception, which makes research impossible

I've used this for years to help me and it suddenly stopped working. If I add timeboxing it is gone once the browser refreshes, same with limits. I've removed the ext. and reloaded it, and still nothing just isn't working now. No idea what to do.

I only came here because chrome is blocking me from loading my extension locally. I am a fan of "earn your free time" idea rather than schedules or daily limits Wanted to test this, but apparently when I put a task done, The owl says it has decided that I don't deserve this free time and that I should work harder. Is this some safety mechanism so that you don't trick the owl by adding a task when you get some urge so that you add the task and waits some time to ensure you will work? don't know. But I have my own tools that do that better than here, and I just need to make tool allow me when I have done the work. Another not so good thing is that every website is considered hostile be default. There is the trick that some other reviewer mentioned of adding .com .edu etc.. as your white list. But I think this is just some extra steps for achieving expected basic functionality (if I wanted to only allow some sites, I should choose to, not being forced by default). Anyway this is my initial impression of this extension, I will test it further and might change my review if I find anything else to say.

I agree with other reviews criticizing the 3 minute timer for websites that aren't blocked but also aren't whitelisted. I have ADHD and really struggle with staying focused when it comes to reading so things will take me longer to find when doing research and constantly having to look at the countdown to see if the page needs a refresh does not let me focus fully on what I'm trying to read. Just a blacklist would've been preferred, sometimes I need to leave a page open for a long time but will never visit that site again afterwards so I don't want to bother with whitelisting it. The owls branch often blocks buttons on sites like Netflix during my freetime so I can't even enjoy my break without some annoyance. I do really like the concept of this extension with the browsing stats, to do list, reward times, and autoblocking of goof off sites but the 3 minute timer is really a deal breaker, I get stressed even just thinking about trying to browse to do any research so until this feature is removed I can't recommend this extension.

I really like gamification and I wanted to like this extension, but the fact that the owl considers every unlisted website in the settings as something bad that must be closed makes it unusable for everyday web browsing. Yes, I agree with closing social networks and e-shopping websites, but there are millions of other websites that do not need to be closed, and users do not have the time to add the whole internet to the settings of the app.

Kind of works. Blocks most websites but wont block 4chan. I tried putting every combination of url that 4chan uses but still refuses to block it.

the OWL on the lower corner do not let me zoom out on the google map site very annoying need option to shift it to any location i want. for the time being disabling it.

The theory behind it is great. And I think for people that only *need* a handful of websites, it is ideal. But having to add in every single individual website that you'll ever need to access for legitimate reasons (school, side projects, etc) is obnoxious. It's a massive time sink trying to do this, and I think that kills the whole point of it. Again, for the right person, it could be helpful. But for most students that need a large variety of sites to access, from several news sites to course blogs and online instructional websites and the five different domains my university uses for various features, it's a huge hassle to get everything set. But this isn't just to complain. My suggestion is that instead of requiring people to add in every single site they need, just leave the "Manage sites" section to 'blocked sites' and then 'blocked keywords'. Stuff like that would achieve the same purpose without infuriating someone that needs to do extensive research for each assignment in each class, or someone that earns their living from researching and writing.

Instead of scheduled free time, it would be easier to schedule work time and then a total amount of free time per day. Also there is no guide that explains the options. And I'm pretty sure the dev has abandoned the app since it doesn't seem to have been updated since 2012. Also the website is nonfunctional.

Concept is good but implementing isn't so great. I have to do a lot of research so maybe this isn't the tool for me.

Why do I have to manually list the sites I don't want to be closed within 30 seconds? I just want to block a few sites, like 9gag etc. I want all other sites enabled! There is no such option, there's only a white list and a black list, all other sites gets closed after 30 seconds. Sorry but I uninstalled the owl for this reason. Besides, the "export/import configuration" button doesn't even work.

Would be a good app if it didn't close tabs that I actually need for work. I have turned off the exit idle tab option, and added the websites to the allowed list. Still it closes them after like 20 mins. That doesn't increase productivity. It just makes me really annoyed and have to stop what im doing to reopen the tabs. I think this could be a good app otherwise.

Overall the extension works and I like it expect for the fact that it closes tabs when I am not looking or am not on them. This can get pretty annoying when I am doing research or anything. I still use the timer and I can find the information I need within the time I have set on the timer. But for example I go back to my document and I still want to keep the research study around for referencing and copy paste, but the tab's timer keeps ticking and then in the background it closes. Could a option be added on whether the tabs timer is only active if the tab is active? I think Leechblock, which I also use, by James Anderson has a similar function "Count time spent on these sites only when browser tab is active". I definitely would prefer to having this option rather than having to schedule free time almost constantly which sort of defeats the purpose. On the positive side your task manager is great.

Afer using it for a while I have a few suggestions. If you whitelist a certain website that you need for work it doesn't automatically whitelist all the subdomains and you have to manually whitelist them which is not practical at all. Also, the maximum time allowed is to big I can just set it to 2000000 seconds and the owl will just sit there. Also there should be a settings lock option for the biggest procrastinators :)

I'm giving it a four, so as not to gush. Initial impressions I like it. The owl gives me a bit of warning, it is ominous, and it reminds me that I don't need to be spending this time on most if not any of these sites. I don't feel that it is stopping more than making me aware. I guess to this owl I look like a mouse in a field who has spent too much time sitting still in the open. It may be a primal instinct that makes this effective. On another note I have also noticed it seems to be in an anti-desperation mode as the timer decreases when I reopen a tab - usually for a legitimate reason, knowing that I can finish my business and get out. Okay I am adjusting downward to a three, more like a 3.5 however it would be a 4.5 if only the "anti-desperation mode" switch worked. It seems to be on no matter how the switch is selected. And it looks like we're years in between updates. Oh well. Five stars and a sandwich for the dev if this issue is addressed. Would also be good to have a quick ad button so we don't have to keep copy pasting to allow sites we need to keep open.

I think that it wold be better to set the blocked time instead of free time, make more sense to me. Also, and option to add a work related site to the list that you can just click on extensions menu, I have dozen of sites and is annoying to add them one by one.

I really don't like the fact that it automatically closes websites that are not on your approved list (unless you are on free time). You either need to adjust the timer for an incredibly long time or schedule more free time.

Please help!!! I am unable to do my project work. Project work includes opening a new site from google a lot lot of times.Every time I open a site, the OWL unnecessarily blocks it. Please reply me the solution.

Works well for me except the position of the owl blocks the G+ post button - even in freetime!!

There should be pause button. Sometimes I am writing in communities, forums and this would close them. Its very irritating that it closes my forums and I need to re-write all the stuff. Also going to extensions again and again to disable this is very time consuming job. Please add pause/freeze button

This idea is great but i can't add tumblr to it :(

Could be better. I like StayFocusd better than this. I'd prefer that the owl doesn't automatically close my page. Another thing that bugged me is that I had to constantly add urls to the list of Allowed Sites.

I will remove it because I need something that allows everything except the sites I've blocked for ( blacklist only ). Since I'm a web developer I'm constantly in many different blogs and websites searching for info and Owl becomes a productivity enemy for me. Other than that it works fine

There is no option to choose between am/pm and 24h time format, also input buttons are time consuming to click. Instead of free time it would be easier to set up work time. There is no difference between having a tab opened and having it focused, which makes my multitab habits a problem now.

There are a few JavaScript errors that show up in the Developer Console when using this extension. I wish it were open source so I could fix them!

Great concept but I've knocked a star off because the owl's overlay div prevents me from using web pages which have elements in the bottom-right of the screen, such as Google Maps. Message to mrieck - could you please add a collapse/expand button so I can minimise it out of the way please :)

There's potential here, but as mentioned above, there are bugs and places that could really be improved. The extension closes pages after a certain period of time even if you turn that option off. Also, there needs to be an option to move the owl from the corner it sits in - it blocks my ability to hit buttons I need to when working with PDFs. Also, as noted above, there's no explanation of what "anti-desperation mode" even is. Would be nice to know. This really is a clever extension and it works well enough that it's been helpful, but I can't have important sites closing while I'm working.

Could be awesome, but the developer decided to release it before fix critical bugs (app closes tab in whitelist). Also, I would rather see a page like the one shown to sites in blacklist when trying to access a site neither in white or blacklist (i.e. app is harsher to sites that doesn't know how to behave than to sites that should be blocked)

What is anti-desperation mode supposed to mean anyways?

Nice extension to enforce focus. Blocks websites based on a black list, allows sites in a white list and everything else is "grey" and is kept open for a few (configurable) seconds. One thing that annoys me and that I think is a bug, is that it still wants to close tabs in the whitelist as if they were " unused", even though that option is disabled. Onde that is fixed, I can give it 5 stars!