Free · macOS 14+ · No account needed
Block gambling sites on your Mac with a lock that a bad moment can't undo.
A blocker removes easy access and buys you time. It isn't treatment, and it works best alongside real support — there are free, confidential helplines listed directly below.
Free forever core · v1.22.4 · Universal binary · Apple-notarised
If gambling is costing you money, sleep or relationships, talking to someone who does this every day is worth more than any piece of software. These services are free, confidential, and open to people worried about someone else too.
National Problem Gambling Helpline — call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738), or 1-800-522-4700. Free, confidential, 24/7, for you or for someone you're worried about. Chat is available too.
ncpgambling.org →National Gambling Helpline — 0808 8020 133. Free, confidential, 24/7, run by GamCare. GAMSTOP is a separate free scheme that blocks you from opening or logging into online accounts with GB-licensed operators.
gamcare.org.uk →Find A Helpline lists free, confidential gambling and crisis services by country. Gamblers Anonymous runs free peer-support meetings in many countries.
findahelpline.com →Financial harm and thoughts of self-harm often arrive together. In the US and Canada, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Elsewhere, Find A Helpline lists crisis lines for your country.
findahelpline.com →These are independent organisations. FocusDragon has no relationship with any of them and receives nothing for listing them. Details checked in August 2026 — helpline numbers do occasionally change.
FocusDragon is a website and app blocker for macOS. Used for gambling sites, its job is narrow and worth being precise about: it removes easy access, and it puts distance between an urge and a login screen. That distance is often the difference between a bad hour and a bad month.
What it doesn't do is treat anything. It doesn't address why the urge shows up, it can't reach your phone or someone else's laptop, and it will never be a substitute for a helpline, a counsellor, a self-exclusion scheme or a support group. If you only do one thing today, make it the call, not the download.
Where a blocker does earn its place is as one layer among several. Self-exclusion schemes cover licensed operators at the account level. Some banks will put a gambling block on card spending if you ask them. A blocker covers the device you actually reach for. None of the three is sufficient on its own; together they make relapse take effort and involve other people, which is the whole idea.
FocusDragon has ten lock types. Most of them are for ordinary distraction. Four are designed for the case where the person trying to lift the block is you, and you are not currently on your own side.
Set the date it ends and it cannot be lifted before then — not by force-quitting, not by reinstalling, not by any option inside the app. It's the only lock in FocusDragon with no override at all, and gambling sites are the case it was designed for. Choose the date while you're thinking clearly, because the version of you that wants it gone won't get a vote.
Lifting the block requires a set number of full Mac restarts. Firm rather than absolute, which makes it a reasonable first step if Frozen feels like too large a commitment today. Each restart puts several minutes and a broken train of thought between an urge and a site.
FocusDragon generates a long random string — up to 500 characters — and won't lift the block until you type it back exactly. It's a minute of deliberate, boring effort at precisely the moment impulse is least willing to spend one. You can set your own text instead if a sentence in your own words would land harder.
Have a partner, friend or family member set the password at block creation and keep it. Lifting the block then means asking them — which turns a private moment into a conversation. If you'd rather not involve anyone, generate a long password and deliberately don't keep a copy.
The remaining six lock types — Timer, Schedule, Date, Delay, Breakable and Sessions — are lighter and better suited to ordinary focus work. They're described in full on the website blocker for Mac page.
A lock is only as good as the thing enforcing it, and most Mac blockers keep their enforcement inside the app you can see. Drag that app to the Trash and the block goes with it. FocusDragon splits the two: the visible app is a control panel, while enforcement runs in a root-owned background daemon that keeps going regardless of what the app is doing.
All of that is in the free version. Pro is a one-time $4.99 that adds locked mode, Bulletproof Strictness and full statistics; nothing you need to block gambling sites sits behind it. If you want the general walkthrough of how enforcement is built, it's on the main Mac blocker page, and the ADHD focus page covers matching lighter locks to everyday distraction.
More on the full FAQ page.
No, and any tool that says otherwise is overselling. A blocker removes easy access and puts time between an urge and a site. That time is genuinely valuable, and it is also all a blocker does. It doesn't address why the urge is there, and it can't reach a phone, a betting shop or a friend's laptop. Most people who find a blocker useful are using it alongside a helpline, a counsellor, a self-exclusion scheme or a support group — not instead of them.
Frozen is the one built for this. A Frozen block runs until a date you set at creation and cannot be turned off before then — not by force-quitting, not by reinstalling, not by any setting inside the app. If Frozen feels like too much for a first attempt, Restart (requires a set number of full Mac reboots to lift) and Random Text (requires retyping a long generated string exactly) both cost far more than a moment of impulse usually has available.
You can't lift it early. That is the entire point of choosing it, and it's why it's worth choosing the end date carefully rather than quickly. If you want something firm but reversible, use Restart or Password instead — Password works well when someone you trust sets it and holds it, so lifting the block means having a conversation first.
Not easily. Enforcement runs at the system level through a background daemon as well as inside the browser, so switching from Safari to Chrome to Firefox doesn't change the rules. Extensions ship for Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Firefox. Blocks also survive quitting the app, force-quitting the daemon, and dragging the app to the Trash mid-block — a root daemon restores it within seconds. Changing your system clock won't move a timer forward either.
Yes, on the Mac. Any macOS app can be added to a block and FocusDragon force-quits it while the block is active, using the same lock types as website blocking. It cannot do anything about your phone or any other device — worth planning around rather than discovering later.
Add domains as you find them; a block can be edited to add sites even while it's locked. What a blocker can't do is anticipate every mirror and new operator, which is one of the reasons self-exclusion schemes are worth using alongside it — GAMSTOP in Great Britain covers licensed operators at the account level rather than the domain level.
The core blocker is free forever: unlimited blocks, all 10 lock types including Frozen, every browser extension, and system-level enforcement. Nothing about blocking gambling sites is behind a paywall. Pro is a one-time $4.99 and adds locked mode, Bulletproof Strictness and full statistics. It isn't a subscription and nothing renews. There's a 7-day trial with a card up front and a single $4.99 charge on day 7 unless you cancel; refunds within 14 days.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple Silicon or Intel. Universal binary, signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple before every release. There's no account required to use the free blocker.
FocusDragon is free, takes a couple of minutes to set up, and will keep a block in place long after you've stopped wanting it there. Set it up alongside the support above rather than instead of it.
Free forever core · Pro $4.99 once, not a subscription · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel
US: call or text 1-800-MY-RESET · UK: 0808 8020 133 · Elsewhere: findahelpline.com