Comparison
Cat Break vs StayFocusd
StayFocusd is one of the oldest and most trusted site blockers on the Chrome Web Store. Cat Break is newer and does something deliberately different. Both are free, neither wants an account, and neither sends your browsing anywhere. The real question is whether you want to be blocked or interrupted — because that decides which one is still installed next month.
Pick StayFocusd if…
You want to be genuinely stopped. StayFocusd's Nuclear Option blocks everything for a set period with no way to talk yourself past it, and you can block right down to specific paths, pages, or even videos and images inside a page. If your problem needs a wall, this is the wall.
Pick Cat Break if…
Being walled off is exactly why you uninstalled the last one. Cat Break puts a cat on the screen, pauses whatever's playing, and lets you carry on if you really meant to. It's a speed bump you're allowed to cross.
The difference that actually matters
A hard blocker assumes the version of you who set it up should overrule the version of you at 11pm. That works right up until the evening you genuinely need the site, hit the wall, and disable the extension. Most people never turn it back on. That's not a character flaw — it's what happens when a tool's only setting is all the way on.
A blocker you disabled in March is doing less for you than a nudge you still have installed in November.
Cat Break makes the opposite bet: that you mostly don't notice how long you've been somewhere, and that being shown — warmly, unmissably — is enough most of the time. When you hit your limit a cat walks onto the page, the video pauses, and a countdown runs. You can press Esc and continue. The theory is that you usually won't.
One technical difference worth knowing
Most trackers count a tab as spent time whenever it's open. Cat Break counts it only while that tab is the focused one. Alt-tab to your editor, take a call, or leave twelve tabs parked in the background and the clock stops. It means the 45 minutes it reports are 45 minutes you actually spent looking at the thing, which matters if you're the sort of person who keeps twenty tabs open permanently.
The other one: because a break you can still hear isn't a break, Cat Break pauses playing video when it interrupts — including players buried in shadow DOM, like YouTube's. If a page refuses to pause, it mutes the tab instead, then restores playback afterwards. A blocker doesn't need to solve this, because it takes the whole page away.
Side by side
| StayFocusd | Cat Break | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Hard block — the page won't load | A cat interrupts; you can dismiss it |
| Can you get past it? | Not during a Nuclear Option session | Yes, Esc or Shoo, on purpose |
| Time counted | Time on the site | Only focused, active-tab time |
| Blocking precision | Sites, subdomains, paths, pages, in-page content | Whole sites, with per-site limits |
| Playing video | Page is blocked outright | Paused, then resumed after the break |
| Allowlist mode | Allowed Sites mode | List-only mode |
| Scheduling | Active hours | Not supported |
| Account required | No | No |
| Data leaves your device | No | No |
| Open source | No | Yes, MIT |
| Browser | Chrome | Chrome |
| Price | Free | Free |
Where StayFocusd is straightforwardly better
It's been around far longer, it has a much larger user base, and its blocking is more precise than ours — you can block a path or a page rather than a whole domain, which Cat Break can't do. If you want scheduled active hours, it has them and we don't. And if you have tried gentle approaches and they genuinely haven't worked, a wall is the correct tool. We'd rather you used the thing that works than the thing we made.
Where Cat Break is different
Focused-time-only counting, video that pauses and resumes, per-site limits with a list-only mode, a break that ends itself, and nine cats. It's MIT licensed, so you can read every line of what it does. It never asks for an account and nothing about your browsing leaves your machine — the only network request it makes is fetching the cat video.
The honest summary
Both are free, both keep your data on your own machine, and both are worth trying. They are not really competing for the same job. One stops you; the other reminds you. If you already know which of those you need, you already know which to install — and if you don't, installing the free one first costs nothing.
Questions
Is Cat Break a replacement for StayFocusd?
Not exactly. StayFocusd blocks sites; Cat Break interrupts you and lets you continue. If hard blocking is working for you, keep it. Cat Break is aimed at people who have uninstalled a blocker because it was too rigid.
Can I run both at once?
Yes. They are separate extensions and don't conflict. Some people block the worst few sites outright and use a gentler time limit everywhere else.
Is Cat Break free like StayFocusd?
Yes. No account, no ads, no paid tier. It is MIT licensed and the source is public on GitHub.
Does Cat Break work in Firefox?
No. Cat Break is Chrome only at the moment. StayFocusd is also a Chrome extension, so neither helps you in Firefox.
Free forever · No account · Nothing leaves your device · MIT licensed