Social media is light pollution.
When you lock in, the noise fades and you can finally see the stars.
01 · The extension
Tame, don't just block.
Most blockers treat a site as all or nothing. Seiza gives every site one of four levels, chosen per profile. Try them on this made-up video site.
Allowed: nothing changes.
Part of a site, its own level
Redirect YouTube Shorts while the rest of YouTube is tamed, or allow reddit.com/r/writing while the rest of Reddit is redirected.
Eleven sites, ready to tame
Reddit, YouTube, X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitch, Threads and Bluesky. Add any other site by its address.
Click away the rest
Anything else you'd rather not see, you can click away, and keep a site tamed all the time, outside sessions too.
02 · The redirect page
A pause before the scroll
Visits to a redirected site go to a calm Seiza page first. Focus for five minutes, read your own if-then plan, or open one of your links. If you still need the site once the wait is up, take a few minutes on it. Or don't: Not now is always right there.
Why a pause works. In a six-week field study of a pause-before-opening app, people opened the apps they chose 57% less. The easy way out mattered most; the wait helped too. (Grüning et al., 2023. One study, so a modest finding.)
Focus for five minutes first
The countdown keeps going if you switch tabs.
Your if-then plan When I want to scroll, I'll write one paragraph first.
- My draft docs.example.com
- Reading list example.com
03 · The desktop app
A night sky that fills with your focus
Outside a session, the app's sky is washed out by haze. When you lock in, it clears, and your new star forms.
Stars
Every session becomes a star in your profile's color. Longer sessions, bigger and brighter stars.
Constellations
Each week's stars join into a constellation with a made-up name, which you can rename.
Planets
Each month with focus grows a planet that takes shape as the hours add up. No two are alike.
Moons
Days with focus in a row earn moons around the month's planet. A missed day never takes one away.
Missed days cost nothing: the sky never loses anything. Comets, meteor showers and auroras turn up now and then, and nothing pops up to tell you.
04 · Satellites · thoughts for later
Launch the thought. Keep the focus.
Mid-focus thoughts like "I should check this real quick" turn into distractions. Press Alt+P (Option+P on a Mac) from anywhere, type it, and press Return. It goes into orbit, and you're straight back where you were.
Out of sight
During a session you only see how many are in orbit, not what they say.
Back when you're done
Nothing pops up. When the session ends, they wait for you: "3 satellites came back."
A quick checklist
Tick each one Done, Snooze it into orbit again, make it a Task, or Delete it.
Why it works. Writing down a plan for an unfinished task stops it from pulling at your attention. (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2011. A set of lab studies, so a modest finding.)
3 in orbit
Alt+P opens this box from any app.
05 · Private by design
Nothing leaves your computer
Seiza collects nothing. It has no accounts, no analytics, no ads, and no servers of its own.
- Kept on your device
Your profiles, sessions, history and sky stay in your browser and the app's data folder.
- Linked locally
The extension and the app talk over your browser's Native Messaging, which never leaves your computer.
- No network at all
Neither makes network requests. The source code is public, so you can check any of it.
06 · Install
Free, and yours to keep.
The desktop app
A .dmg for macOS, or a .deb or .AppImage for Linux. It isn't signed with a paid Apple Developer account, so macOS asks you to allow it once: open it, click Done, then System Settings › Privacy & Security › Open Anyway.
Download from GitHubThe browser extension
For Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Firefox and Zen. It's in review at the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons. Until it's listed, you can build it from source.
Build it from sourceThe app and the extension each work on their own. Install both and they link up by themselves.
The joinery at 14:20 is beautiful. Trying this on the weekend.
Which wood would you use for something lighter?