torwacheChrome Web Storesoon

Some sites should simply not open.

Dead-simple website blocking for Chrome. Put a domain on your list and it stops opening. Take it off and it’s back. There’s nothing else to learn.

Chrome Web StoresoonRead the source
  • Free forever
  • No account
  • No telemetry
  • Open source
The whole interface. A list of domains, a switch on each, a box for subdomains. There’s no dashboard hiding behind it.

It works like this

There’s no onboarding, because there’s nothing to onboard.

  1. 01

    Add a domain

    Type youtube.com, hit Block. Tick the box if you mean the subdomains too.

  2. 02

    Chrome does the refusing

    The extension hands Chrome one rule per domain. Chrome enforces it in its own network stack, and nothing phones home.

  3. 03

    You hit a wall

    Instead of the site you get a plain page saying why. No countdown, no five more minutes, no way through.

Most blockers want to become your life coach. This one just blocks websites.

No accounts. No timers, streaks, schedules or point scores. No password gate that a determined afternoon gets past anyway. Add a domain and it stops opening, switch it off when you actually want it back. That’s the entire surface area.

What you get instead of the site. There’s no button here that lets you through, and that’s the point.

Three permissions, and why

Every extension asks for something. Here’s the whole list, and what each one does.

storage
Keeps your blocklist and theme on this device.Without it the list wouldn’t survive closing the tab. Local storage only, never cloud sync.
declarativeNetRequest
Hands Chrome one rule per domain you’ve switched on.Chrome does the refusing, in its own network stack. The extension declares the rules and never sees a request.
webNavigation
Tells the extension a navigation happened, so a blocked one gets a readable page.It also catches sites that answer their own navigation from a service worker cache, which network rules can’t see.

No host permissions. No content scripts. It can’t read or change any page you visit, and it makes no network requests of its own.

Useful before you install

Website blocker guides, without filler.

Learn the quickest way to block websites on Chrome, what permissions to check, and when a larger focus tool is worth the extra machinery.

How-toBlock websites on ChromeChecklistChoose a website blocker extensionCompareSee how popular website blockers differ

Questions

The ones worth asking about anything you let into your browser.

Does it run analytics?
Not in the extension — no telemetry, no error reporting, no network requests of any kind. This website is a separate thing and uses Fathom for aggregate page views. Fathom is not part of the extension.
Are there ads?
No. Nothing gets injected into any page, because the extension has no way to touch a page at all.
Does it cost anything, now or later?
No. No paid tier, no trial, no licence key, nothing to upgrade. It’s finished software under a licence that lets you do whatever you like with it.
Do I need an account?
No. There’s nothing to sign up for and nothing to sign in to.
Does it ask to read and change data on every website?
No. That prompt comes from host permissions, and torwache declares none. It has no content scripts either, so it can’t read or modify any page you visit.
Can you see my browsing?
The developer can’t. Chrome does hand the extension navigation URLs through webNavigation so it can catch a blocked site. Those are compared with your list on your machine, discarded immediately, and never stored or sent anywhere. Only the hostname of a blocked URL reaches the local block page.
Can I sync my blocklist between devices?
No. It lives in local extension storage and stays there. Syncing would mean an account, or at minimum handing a list of “sites I can’t stop visiting” to somebody’s server. Copy it across yourself — it’s a list of domains.
Does it have streaks, scores, or a productivity dashboard?
No. It blocks websites.
Can I get past the block page without touching the list?
No. No bypass button, no timer, no “five more minutes”. The page is a dead end on purpose. Open the list and switch the entry off if you really mean it.
Can I lock myself out by blocking the blocklist?
No. The blocklist lives at a chrome-extension:// address, and only http and https are ever considered for blocking. An extension id has no dot in it either, so it can’t be entered as a domain. There’s a test for that.
Does it block tabs I already have open?
Not until they navigate or reload. Blocking applies to requests, and an open page has already made its. Shutting it down retroactively would mean reading the URL of every tab you have open, which needs a permission whose warning reads “Read your browsing history”. Bad trade for saving you one keystroke.
Will it ask for more permissions in an update?
It asks for three and needs all three. If that ever changed, Chrome would disable the extension until you approved the new ones. Read that prompt carefully — for anyone’s extension, not just this one.
Should I trust a random blocker from the internet?
No, and that’s rather the point. It’s a small pile of readable JavaScript with no bundler and no framework behind it. Go read it. Privacy claims are much easier to believe when you can check them yourself.

Free, local, open source, and finished.

There’s no roadmap. Nothing is coming that you’ll have to opt out of.

Chrome Web StoresoonInstall from a release