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Vol. II — No. 670Late EditionPrice: your attention

BlockTheNews

All the news we withheld, so you could think.

Today’s editionEst. 2024blockthenews.app

Front page A news blocker for Safari

BlockTheNews — stay informed without living in the news. The newscan wait.Your lifewon’t.

Block distracting news websites. Break the automatic visit. Read on your own terms.

Every news site is a slot machine wearing a serious font. BlockTheNews puts a six-second pause in front of 670 of them, pre-loaded from more than ten countries, and in front of any others you care to nominate. The page you wanted is replaced by a countdown ring. There is nothing to click. You simply wait.

Then it asks one question: why do you need this, right now? Six characters minimum. Your answer is never saved, and nothing about your browsing leaves the device. Mean it, and the site opens for ten minutes before quietly closing again. Sites you genuinely rely on can be waved through for good.

By the Department of Second Thoughts Filed under: Your own good

Download on the App StoreRead the manifesto

How it works ◆ In three unhurried steps

We interrupt this panic for a short breath

  1. Six seconds. The count cannot be skipped.
  2. One sentence. Why do you need this, right now? It is never saved.
  3. Ten minutes. Then it closes again.

The extension loads before the page does. Where the headlines should be there is a plain screen, a number, and six seconds you had not budgeted for — not a punishment, merely longer than a reflex.

Six seconds is the longest unit of time known to modern media.

Our correspondent, timing it

This site is blocked

Blocked by BlockTheNews. You can continue after a short wait.

Six second wait ready to begin.

Fig. 1 — The whole flow, reproduced at actual patience. The field is real: type your own excuse and it stops typing for you.

The default list

670 sources of urgency, already accounted for

The list ships with the app. You are welcome to disagree with all of it.

Six hundred and seventy domains arrive with the app, gathered from more than ten countries. Some of them shout in languages our subeditors had to look up.

Each one is a checkbox. Untick the site you read for work, add the one that quietly ruins your evenings, and pause the whole arrangement whenever you like — your lists stay exactly where you left them.

670

domains, pre-loaded

By top-level domain

.com
295
.pl
49
.de
46
.fr
28
.nl
25
.br
24

Listings, abridged

Domain · Region

  • panicwire.exampleUS
  • breaking-nothing.exampleUS
  • everything-is-fine.exampleUS
  • dailyoutrage.exampleUK
  • the-evening-spiral.exampleUK
  • der-alarm.exampleDE
  • tagesangst.exampleDE
  • le-scandale.exampleFR
  • la-catastrophe.exampleFR
  • il-clamore.exampleIT
  • de-paniek.exampleNL
  • krzyk-dnia.examplePL
  • o-alarme.exampleBR
  • hourly-dread.exampleAU
  • bulletin-of-doom.exampleNZ
  • aaj-ka-shor.exampleIN

…and 656 more, listed alphabetically, like a phone book for anxiety.

The practical pages

Take your attention back.

Field guides to website blocking, self-control and a calmer relationship with the news.

All field guides ↗

Attention & habits 5 min read

How to stop doomscrolling

A practical guide to stopping doomscrolling: spot your triggers, add friction, set a stopping point, and build a news habit that leaves room for your life.

Read the guide

The back page

The back page

Where the paper stops pretending, and the small print turns out to be the honest part.

Obituary

Your Attention Span

1994 — 2026

Died peacefully, and at some length, in a tab it had opened for reasons it could no longer recall. It leaves behind one unfinished article, a half-watched explainer and a note reading only read later. It is survived by 43 open tabs. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you close them.

Privacy notice

1. Blocking decisions are made on the device. The site you are opening is compared against lists held in extension storage, where you are sitting and nowhere else.

2. Visited URLs are not transmitted. Browsing history is not read, collected, retained or inferred, and your lists are never sent to the subscription service.

3. That service receives three things and no others: a random installation identifier, the extension version, and the platform type. Their sole purpose is to confirm a subscription is active.

This is the least interesting privacy policy ever written. That is the point.

Available on Apple devices

  • iPhoneSafari · iOS 15.4 or later
  • iPadSafari · iPadOS 15.4 or later
  • MacSafari · macOS 12.3 or later

One subscription covers all three. The source code is on GitHub, for the curious and the suspicious alike.

Printed nowhere. Distributed everywhere. No trees, no vans, no editors.

Subscriptions Delivered daily, unlike the calm

Cancel yoursubscription to panic

BlockTheNews Pro keeps the pause in place on iPhone, iPad and Mac. No feed, no notifications, no daily digest of things that have already happened without you.

Download on the App Store
  • Monthly or yearly. Cancel whenever you like.
  • One subscription for iPhone, iPad and Mac.