Many offices and public institutions block access to websites such as social media, news, games and anything else that might lower the productivity of employees. But what if you have to work or study from home or your office doesn’t apply this policy, yet you realize you’re wasting a lot of time online and would like to limit your own access to the entertainment websites you visit most frequently?
Cold Turkey is a free application that lets you do that, and it’s very easy too. The program is designed for anyone to use it and it allows you to block access to whatever sites or applications you want for a set period of time.
Installation & Requirements
Cold Turkey’s installation is an adware-free very basic process. After a few standard settings, the program will be up and running in no time. Cold Turkey is free but since it doesn’t involve any ads, the developers rely solely on donations for revenue. Moreover, when making a donation on the official website you get to choose how much of it will go to charity.
The application runs on Windows 2000, NT, XP, Vista, 7 and 8 and requires at least Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.
Interface
Cold turkey has a clean sky-blue layout separated into three different panes: Block What?, Till when? and Are you sure?. The first pane lets you choose from three categories you can block: websites, applications and custom. The sites section includes a list of some of the most popular social network and gaming websites that you can individually check/uncheck. The applications section allows users to create a list containing any programs they have installed and block themselves from accesing them. Adding an application is resumed to browsing to it in Windows Explorer and selecting it. The custom area lets you include for blocking other websites that are not offered in the sites section. Simply type in a URL and press Add. Rinse and repeat.
The Till When? pane includes date and time options for users to set how long the selected websites and apps will be blocked. The time interval can be anything from 10 minutes to one month. Last, but not least the Are you sure? section is where you make your final decision and choose to Go Cold Turkey.
Be aware, after you blocked the desired websites/apps, there’s no going back. Power users might find a way around it, but Cold Turkey cannot be uninstalled while running or stopped from the Task Manager. You can’t trick it even by changing the system time. So it’s safe to say, the average user will not be able to regain access to the blocked content until the time expires.
Pros
– Easy, adware-free installation.
– Clean, user-friendly interface.
– Lets you block known social media & gaming websites, an unlimited number of programs and any other website that is distracting you.
– The time interval can be set from 10 minutes to one month.
– The program survives reboots and cannot be uninstalled or terminated from Task Manager.
Cons
– There is a removal tool offered on the main website.
Conclusion
Cold Turkey was made to make up for our lack of will and it does it well. It’s the software equivalent to chaining yourself to the radiator, maybe a bit extreme, but hey….if it gets the job done.
