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.
- Distraction Free · ph · 2026-09-19 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- I built an app that blocks social media until you read Quran daily · hn · 2026-01-25 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- I built an app that blocks social media until you read Quran daily · hn · 2026-01-09 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Hack · hn · 2026-09-22 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- I built a smart blocker after destroying my dopamine baseline · hn · 2025-11-02 · 20 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- DataSentryX: Tracker Blocker · ph · 2026-09-18 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Blocklyn: App & Site Blocker · ph · 2026-09-17 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Blocker · ph · 2026-09-07 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.40
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a workflow automation tool for Real estate yet.