Solace

I built Solace after trying to put CFAR’s Resolve Cycles into practice and finding myself pulled away during the trickiest parts of the work. It’s a Firefox extension that locks your browser to the tabs you choose for a set amount of time, and using it has genuinely helped me train that distraction habit out.

The usual “block distracting sites” add-ins never worked for me: I’d just distract myself with something semi-productive instead, like email. Locking to a chosen set of tabs closes that loophole entirely.

The functionality is straightforward: pick one tab or all of them, set a time, and new tabs, tab switching, and off-site navigation are blocked until the session ends.

I think people use apps because they’re satisfying to use, so I wanted to make something with a unique and beautiful design. I settled on an eclipse motif—as the timer counts down, an eclipse animation plays out. It’s visible in the toolbar icon itself, so you always have a quick reference for where you are in a session. I also wrote the sound effects myself, making sure they felt satisfying and intentional.