Freedom

21 Responses

1. Gavin Smith says:

   April 15, 2009 at 9:54 am

   Hi there!
   I love the sound of both this application (Freedom) and Steve Lambert’s SelfControl. There are advantages of both – I love the fact that yours blocks all net access whereas SelfControl only has a blacklist. A blacklist is no use to me as I would have to spend weeks inputting all the URLs etc that I might access! However, I do like the fact that SelfControl can’t be gotten around by rebooting. Is there any possibility of adding this feature to Freedom? I would very happily pay for this feature if it meant that I couldn’t just reboot or do something else to get around it.

   Any chance? Thanks!
   Gavin
2. Laure says:

   April 15, 2009 at 10:57 pm

   Freedom is excellent. What would make it even better is to be able to schedule Freedom- i.e. every day at x time, I will be free for 2 hours, so it does it without me procrastinating.
3. Jon says:

   April 16, 2009 at 10:56 pm

   Nice App….

   Would love to have the ability to schedule the start of the downtime. To be more specific – to get my butt off the computer at a certain time each night.
4. admin says:

   April 18, 2009 at 9:51 am

   Gavin,

   Unfortunately, Freedom will *not* be modified to circumvent the reboot option. Maintaining state between reboots is a whole other set of issues and I am worried about potential problems. Furthermore, the idea of actually making the program un-circumventable is pretty much an impossibility. Someone with root access will be able to circumvent both Freedom and Self Control.
5. admin says:

   April 18, 2009 at 10:05 am

   I don’t plan on writing support for scheduling into Freedom, at present.

   There are a few was to go about scheduling. One way is decribed in this comment thread:
   http://fstutzman.com/2008/04/18/productive-unit-structures-introducing-freedom/

   Another way might be with the Automator.

   You might also write a cron that calls “open /Applications/Freedom.app” at 8AM each day.

   Other ideas/hacks?
6. Terry says:

   April 26, 2009 at 11:27 pm

   I’m not sure if this counts as scheduling or not…I think it’s a bit different. Might be a good compromise. My suggestion is the following: after Freedom does its thing, and time is up, it would be great if some options were given. The first one would ask you if you’d like to continue to remain offline; click “Yes” and then it starts up again. The second would ask you if you’d like Freedom to disconnect from the network, but after a selected amount of time. This way you could actually schedule breaks: work offline for an hour, reward yourself with 20 minutes of web surfing and email checking, and then Freedom rescues you, forcing you back to work.
7. admin says:

   April 28, 2009 at 10:47 am

   Terry,

   Yes – I’ve had a few other requests for some changes at the end of a Freedom session. I’m likely going to integrate these in an .5 branch release.
8. Jim says:

   April 29, 2009 at 5:40 pm

   I love the idea but could use a little more configuration ability. It would be nice if you could maintain a VPN connection, as that way I could continue to do work on files from our corporate server. Also, keeping open a skype connection would be helpful, as that’s my office phone as well.
9. Grebmar says:

   May 5, 2009 at 4:04 pm

   Probably not possible, but it would be useful to allow access to specific URLs defined by the user. For example, I use online foreign language dictionaries that I cannot access while Freedom is running. But I could always look stuff up later, I guess.
10. John says:

    May 19, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    I second what Gavin says, if you could allow the network to be blocked even in the event of a reboot that would be great, It would surely help keep me honest and studying when I’m supposed to.

    And I also like Terry’s suggestions allowing the user to only allow limited breaks in between blocked networking.
11. Mark says:

    July 12, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    Not sure if this is even possible because I assume the way freedom works is by turning off the network…however I’d love it if I was able to set a list of websites that I was permitted to go to while running freedom so that while writing a screenplay for instance, I could hop on wikipedia etc. to check a fact. Any chance something like that could happen?
12. Ryan says:

    July 24, 2009 at 11:13 pm

    This program is a godsend for writers, thanks so much for developing and releasing such a great tool.

    One issue/request: I’m finding that even in the Local Access mode I can’t print to my wireless printer. Would it be possible to include wireless printers in Freedom’s Local Access mode? For example’s sake, my printer’s address shows up as:

    mdns://Brother%20HL-2170W%20series._pdl-datastream._tcp.local./?bidi

    Considering how many of Freedom’s users are writers, I’d hope this is a request that helps others as well. Thanks again.
13. wendy says:

    August 2, 2009 at 10:56 am

    I’m a big fan of the program. I’d like a countdown function that would show the time remaining in an off-line interval. Or, short of that, a static message that shows the time that the off-line interval begin and the length of time that it is set for.
    I would also appreciate the ability to keep open a VPN connection.
14. justin says:

    August 25, 2009 at 5:25 am

    Hi There,

    I’m tech director at a school that is 1:1 laptops with each student bringing in their own computer. Freedom is a great app in this situation as if students are using the computer for an essay test or whatever the teacher can ask that they turn on freedom for however many minutes the test is.

    The problem is that currently you can’t tell if it is running. Could you have it place a visible indicator near the clock that says when the computer will have a connection again?

    We (and I’m sure other) schools would be willing to pay a small fee per machine for this software.

    Feel free to contact me at: jahardman@hkis.edu.hk. You product has great potential in the education segment.
15. Eragmus says:

    September 7, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Incredible app. I’m a HUGE fan. The only thing left to desire is a cooler icon… thanks.
16. Steve says:

    October 13, 2009 at 11:26 am

    Ohhhhhhhh, please put in some type of schedule/clock function! Pretty please?
17. Hal Greene says:

    November 29, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    I see that others have requested a “countdown clock”. I would like to second or third this request. Otherwise…Freedom is great!
18. chris says:

    December 11, 2009 at 5:02 am

    Good app. I use it almost daily.

    One small request. Possible to quit the app after setting time so that it doesn’t appear as on in the Dock or during Command-Tab App switiching?
19. Maciek says:

    December 30, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    Hello Fred,

    I am joining the other users with prays. This software really makes a procrastinator’s life harder and that’s what I was looking for in a long time.

    I have three suggestions of features:
    1. Adding the SelfControl’s feature of having a whitelist of pages. Of course if one want’s to have a whitelist of pages they can use SelfControl itself but still – it would be great to have one app to do both.

    2. Add some kind of scheduling thing e.g. every day at 11:59 PM Freedom kicks in and give’s me 5 minute snooze time to finish off my IM conversation and then cut’s of my Internet access.

    3. Maybe it would be possible to develop the app so it also blocks access to other applications? Now, when I don’t have the access to the Internet I still sometimes procrastinate by doodling something in Corel Painter or sifting through read e-mails and such.

    With these features or not – a great app. Keep up the good work and take care!
20. Jan Marcel says:

    January 14, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    I second Jon’s feature request, which I couldn’t have put more frankly myself:

    “Would love to have the ability to schedule the start of the downtime. To be more specific – to get my butt off the computer at a certain time each night.”

    By the way, so important is this feature to me that I have even just made a donation.
21. Randy Y H says:

    January 20, 2010 at 3:57 pm

    You are a computer hero. Is there any chance of making an iPhone app for this wonderful thingy. Cause you know what is going on: feckless-but-desiring-to-improve worker turns on Freedom for 2 hours of enhanced productivity. 10 minutes later, same feckless-etc. worker is on their iphone tweeting, surfing and f-booking. Helllllppp!

    But it is a great great program. RH