ScrollSentinel by Abu Sayeed

🛡 ScrollSentinel — Take Control of Your Scroll
Stay focused, manage your YouTube viewing time, and turn distractions into opportunities to learn cybersecurity!
ScrollSentinel is a free, open-source Firefox extension designed to help you develop healthier browsing habits by controlling when and how long you can access YouTube.
Unlike traditional website blockers, ScrollSentinel combines scheduled access, daily viewing limits, distraction reduction, and animated cybersecurity learning challenges to make your focus time more productive and engaging.
✨ Key Features
⏰ 1. Scheduled YouTube Access — Browse on Your Schedule
ScrollSentinel allows YouTube access only during two predefined daily viewing windows.
Default viewing hours:
- ☀ Afternoon: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
- 🌙 Evening: 10:00 PM – 11:30 PM
Outside these hours, YouTube is automatically blocked by a focus screen displaying a countdown to your next permitted viewing session.
You can customize both viewing windows to match your personal schedule. All times follow your device's local clock.
⏳ 2. Daily YouTube Viewing Limit
Control how much time you spend on YouTube each day.
- Default daily allowance: 90 minutes
- Customizable daily time limit
- Estimated usage tracking
- Automatic daily reset at local midnight
Even during your permitted viewing hours, YouTube becomes unavailable once your daily time allowance is exhausted.
Example: Although your viewing windows total 3 hours and 30 minutes, the default daily allowance is only 90 minutes.
🔒 3. Strict Mode — Commit to Your Goals
Want to stay disciplined? Activate Strict Mode for 7 or 14 days.
During this period, ScrollSentinel locks your selected viewing schedule, daily time limit, and other extension settings.
This encourages you to follow your focus plan without making impulsive changes.
Important: Strict Mode locks settings within the extension. It cannot prevent Firefox users from disabling or uninstalling the extension, clearing its storage, or changing their system clock.
🧠 4. Animated Cybersecurity Learning Quests
Instead of displaying a boring blocking screen, ScrollSentinel turns your waiting time into an opportunity to explore cybersecurity.
Discover 12 animated cybersecurity learning quests, including:
- 🌐 Networking, DNS, and HTTPS
- 📡 TCP vs. UDP
- 🗝 Principle of Least Privilege
- 🛠 Patch Management
- 🔐 Password Hashing
- 📱 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- 🛡 Zero Trust Security
- 🐧 Linux File Permissions
- 🎯 Threat Modeling
- 🎣 Phishing Detection
- 🔺 CIA Triad
- 💻 Ethical Security Testing
Each quest presents a short motivational message, a practical learning objective, and an illustrated cybersecurity story.
How the learning system works:
- A different cybersecurity quest appears every 30 minutes.
- Its animation can replay every 5 minutes while the blocked page is visible.
- Each quest features its own cybersecurity-themed visual effects.
- Refreshing the page does not unlock another quest.
- Reduced-motion preferences are supported.
The animations introduce security concepts through simple visual stories and are intended as learning prompts rather than complete tutorials.
🚫 5. Distraction-Free YouTube
Reduce unnecessary distractions while using YouTube during permitted hours.
ScrollSentinel can hide selected distracting elements, including:
- Homepage recommendations
- Suggested videos
- Comments
- Selected YouTube Shorts sections and navigation links
- The YouTube notification button
It also attempts to reduce autoplay distractions.
These features are designed to help you use YouTube more intentionally. Some filtering behavior may change when YouTube updates its interface.
🎨 6. Interactive Focus Screen
When YouTube is unavailable, ScrollSentinel displays a cybersecurity-themed blocking screen featuring:
- Animated cybersecurity learning stories
- Topic-specific visual effects
- A countdown to your next viewing window
- Your configured viewing schedule
- Motivational learning messages
- Responsive layouts for different screen sizes
The focus screen is designed to encourage learning rather than simply displaying an access-denied warning.
🔐 7. Privacy-Friendly and Open Source
Your privacy matters.
ScrollSentinel:
- Stores settings and estimated usage data locally in Firefox.
- Does not require registration or user accounts.
- Does not transmit collected browsing data to external servers.
- Does not include advertising or analytics services.
- Provides publicly accessible source code.
🌍 Supported Websites
Currently supported:
✅ YouTube (Firefox Desktop)
Planned for future releases:
- Facebook and Facebook Reels
- Instagram and Instagram Reels
- TikTok
These additional platforms are not blocked by the current version.
⚠ Important Information
ScrollSentinel is currently an experimental Firefox extension.
The extension operates within Firefox and does not block YouTube in other browsers, mobile applications, or at the network level.
Daily usage tracking is approximate and measures activity in focused YouTube tabs rather than exact video playback duration.
The extension is intended to support self-discipline and healthier browsing habits. It is not a tamper-proof parental-control system.
💻 Open Source
ScrollSentinel is developed as an open-source project under the MIT License.
GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/Sayeed843/scrollsentinel
Bug Reports & Feature Requests:
https://github.com/Sayeed843/scrollsentinel/issues
🚀 Take Control of Your Scroll!
Schedule your YouTube time. Lock your focus goals. Explore cybersecurity.
ScrollSentinel helps you spend less time scrolling and more time doing what matters.
ScrollSentinel — Your Time. Your Focus. Your Rules.