🔨 Hammer Control

NOTICE: I am currently working on a standalone version of this project so that it doesn't need to rely on SelfControl. Check it out here.

A script that uses hammerspoon to create schedules for SelfControl.

WARNING: I've built this script to my preferences so there may be a lot of bugs that haven't been caught. Submit an issue or pull request if you do find one though.

Features

Auto-Fill Password

Hammer Control uses your password stored in Apple Keychain to automatically fill out SelfControl's prompt to install a helper. Usually you would need to do this manually, but Hammer Control will do it for you so quickly that you will barely notice it. There will be a quick popup indicating that SelfControl started, but it fades away by itself quickly.

Time Change Resistance

Hammer Control has it's own internal clock and it periodically verifies the time with an online source. The user cannot bypass the schedule if they change the local time. When SelfControl starts however, the user can still bypass it with a time skip. When they change the time back, Hammer Control will automatically start another blocking session.

Installation

Prerequisites

• hammerspoon
  • brew install hammerspoon
• SelfControl
  • brew install selfcontrol

Installer

Use the installer to setup Hammer Control:

git clone https://github.com/Pandoks/hammer-control.git
cd hammer-control
./install

Manual Installation

1. Make hammerspoon directory

   mkdir ~/.hammerspoon

2. Clone directory to hammerspoon directory

   git clone https://github.com/Pandoks/hammer-control.git ~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control

3. Create init.lua for hammerspoon

   touch ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua

4. Add require("hammer-control") to your init.lua file

   echo 'require("hammer-control")' | cat - ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua > temp && mv temp ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua

5. Add your password to Apple Keychain

   security add-generic-password -a $(whoami) -s hammer-control -w

Updates

To update, you can just git pull inside of ~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control directory.

git pull

Remember to reload hammerspoon config after pulling.

Usage

Blocklist

Hammer Control uses blacklists saved from SelfControl. You can save a blacklist (a .selfcontrol file) by pressing ⌘ + s while SelfControl is open. Make sure to remember the full path to the file starting from your home (~) directory, because you will need it to create a schedule.

schedule.json

To create a schedule, create a schedule.json file in the ~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control directory. If you want to use the example-schedule.json as a reference, you can copy it over with cp ~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control/example-schedule.json ~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control/schedule.json or copy and paste this into your schedule.json file:

{
  "sunday": [],
  "monday": [
    {
      "start": "23:00",
      "end": "23:20",
      "blocklist": "~/Desktop/distractions.selfcontrol"
    }
  ],
  "tuesday": [],
  "wednesday": [],
  "thursday": [
    {
      "start": "03:00",
      "end": "04:20",
      "blocklist": "~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control/social-media.selfcontrol"
    },
    {
      "start": "23:00",
      "end": "23:20",
      "blocklist": "~/.hammerspoon/hammer-control/blacklist.selfcontrol"
    }
  ],
  "friday": [],
  "saturday": []
}

The json file must contain all of the days of the week in lower case and have their values as list of objects. Each object has a start, end, and blocklist property. start and end are times in 24 hour format indicating when the scheduled blocking session starts and ends on that specific day. blocklist is the file that SelfControl uses as the blacklist. Ideally, the path to the .selfcontrol file is absolute, referencing its location from the home (~) directory.

NOTE: The hour needs to be 2 digits. 2:00 won't work. 02:00 will work.

Troubleshooting

• Restarting your system may help