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Digital Carrot

Block social media with programmable rules and goals

Details

External ID
46616919
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Digital Carrot
Website domain
digitalcarrot.app
Launched
Jan. 14, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
39
Upvotes percentile
0.7582345191040843
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

Hi Everyone,Digital Carrot is a programmable and pluggable app blocker. It lets you block websites and apps on iOS, Mac and Windows until a set of conditions or goal is met. For example you can block Reddit, Instagram and Steam until your Apple Watch reports that you have walked 5000 steps.The app works by collecting data via plugins that you can use to create goals for yourself. Goals are all represented by expressions that return true or false based on the data you provide. For example, if you want to create a goal to finish all of the tasks in your to-do list you could do something like `data.apple_reminders.due == 0`.The blocking system is also pluggable. That means you can block items via DNS with services as Pi-hole[3]. It also means that the app is not just limited to website blocking! In fact you could write a plugin to control anything that is available via a REST, such as locking a smart lock on your snack cupboard or cranking up the AC in your office until you go outside.Keeping security and user privacy is a top priority for this app (given that it's literally designed to collect information about you). Because of that:- We do not collect or share any information that the app gathers. - Our sync feature is fully end to end encrypted using AES256 and the secure remote password protocol. - All plugins are sandboxed. They cannot access data provided by other plugins and have no external access unless granted by the user. - The app is transparent about the data it has. All of the data that is available to use for goals is browsable in app.Like many of you, I've been dismayed by big tech's lack of concern for our privacy, so keeping these guarantees is personally very important to me. One of the fun things about this project has been that I can kind of flip the script by taking all of the information that has been gathered about me and use it to help cut down on the distractions in my life :)Anyway, I had to walk 4km to unblock HN in order to post this, so I hope you find it helpful![1] Technical overview: https://www.digitalcarrot.app/docs/overview/[2] Plugin repository: https://github.com/digital-carrot-app/plugins[3] Pi-hole plugin: https://github.com/digital-carrot-app/plugins/tree/main/piho...

Enrichment

Theme
digital minimalism and focus tools
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Workflow automation
Audience
B2C
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Commercial product
Normalized one-liner
block social media with custom rules
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

Partial The front-end and goal-tracking logic are straightforward, but multi-platform system-level app and network blocking on iOS, macOS, and Windows requires native platform APIs.

What it would actually take: The application requires native platform code: Apple Screen Time API (FamilyControls / ManagedSettings / DeviceActivity) with special developer entitlements for iOS/macOS, Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) or native process injection/monitoring APIs on Windows, alongside browser extensions. The main barrier is navigating Apple's restricted FamilyControls entitlements, OS-level daemon persistence, and third-party health API OAuth syncing.

Discussion

11 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Home Assistant, Zapier, IFTTT, Notion, Obsidian

Concerns raised: iOS API limitations prevent advanced blocking features, Android accessibility API restrictions may block plugin implementation, Revenue sustainability concerns with open source transition, Midnight reset timing issues for users staying up late

Feature requests: Webhook triggers and sending capabilities, Home Assistant sensor integration, GitHub plugin for PR/ticket/notification-based goals, Smart home integrations (lights, locks) tied to goal completion, Google/Apple Calendar integration for meeting-focused goals

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 57 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #10 of 58 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 73 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a workflow automation tool for Real estate yet.