doppinow.
Let's startAdd to Chrome
Stay on track · DoppiNow feature

Goal-aware tab check

The goal-aware tab check is how DoppiNow decides, during a session, whether the tab in front of you is related to your goal, unrelated, or a neutral "free zone". A calculus video counts as work while you study calculus. Shorts or an unrelated video don't.

Partly available. Your marks, your site lists, the short-video rule and word matching work today, right on your device. A smarter check of what each page is about runs on DoppiNow’s server and switches on for everyone at launch.

Last updated

Key facts

Category
Stay on track
Where to find it
Always on during a session. You tune it in Settings on your DoppiNow home page (doppinow.com), which belong to your account and which the extension follows: Settings → Reminders (sensitivity, Balanced by default, or a whole "feel" in one tap: Gentle, Balanced or Firm), Settings → Your sites and Settings → Doorway pause. The short-video rule is in Settings → Reminders. The smart check waits for your own answer: the popup and the welcome page ask once ("Allow page checks" or "Keep it on this device"), and Settings → Privacy → "Smarter page checks" changes it any time. Until you choose, every check stays on this device.
Availability
In the DoppiNow Chrome extension: a 7-day free trial, then $3.99/month or $29.99/year. Desktop Chrome 120 or newer (other Chromium browsers such as Edge or Brave may also work).
Status
Partly available. Your marks, your site lists, the short-video rule and word matching work today, right on your device. A smarter check of what each page is about runs on DoppiNow’s server and switches on for everyone at launch.

How it works

  1. Only during a session

    DoppiNow checks the tab you’re looking at, on every tab switch and page change.

  2. Your word comes first

    Browser pages are neutral. Then your own marks, your site lists and the short-video rule decide.

  3. Words from your goal

    A page whose title, heading, description, channel or search terms share a word with your goal counts as related.

  4. A free zone

    Search and unknown pages stay neutral: no XP, no reminder, no lost combo.

All the details

  1. Checks run only during a session, and only on the active tab in the focused Chrome window. A check runs on every tab switch and page change, including YouTube's in-page navigation.

  2. The order is:

    1. Browser pages such as a new tab or settings are neutral.
    2. Your own marks for this session.
    3. Your site lists.
    4. The short-video rule.
    5. A smarter check of what the page is about, on DoppiNow’s server (it switches on at launch).
    6. Word matching, right on your device.

  3. Word matching counts a page as related when its title, heading, description, channel or search terms contain a word from your goal. It handles Turkish word endings. A built-in list of usually-distracting sites, recommendation feeds and videos that don't match your goal lean unrelated. Search pages and unknown pages stay neutral.

  4. Neutral pages ("Free zone") earn no XP and cost none. They don't melt the combo or count as time away. Only reaching a related page ends a drift.

  5. When DoppiNow's server can't answer right now, DoppiNow waits a little before asking again, from 30 seconds up to an hour, and word matching answers meanwhile. Changing a setting ends the wait.

Settings: Always on during a session. You tune it in Settings on your DoppiNow home page (doppinow.com), which belong to your account and which the extension follows: Settings → Reminders (sensitivity, Balanced by default, or a whole "feel" in one tap: Gentle, Balanced or Firm), Settings → Your sites and Settings → Doorway pause. The short-video rule is in Settings → Reminders. The smart check waits for your own answer: the popup and the welcome page ask once ("Allow page checks" or "Keep it on this device"), and Settings → Privacy → "Smarter page checks" changes it any time. Until you choose, every check stays on this device.

Why it helps with ADHD

In a 6-week field study with 58 students, goal reminders at the moment of distraction helped people stay on task, although many found them annoying (Lyngs et al. 2020). Barkley argues that help should come "at the point of performance" (Barkley). No study has tested DoppiNow's check.

DoppiNow is a productivity tool, not a treatment for ADHD.

Sources

  1. Lyngs, U., Lukoff, K., Slovak, P., Seymour, W., Webb, H., Jirotka, M., Zhao, J., Van Kleek, M., & Shadbolt, N. (2020). "I just want to hack myself to not get distracted": Evaluating design interventions for self-control on Facebook. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–15. doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376672
  2. Barkley, R. A. (n.d.). The important role of executive functioning and self-regulation in ADHD [Fact sheet]. www.russellbarkley.org/factsheets/ADHD_EF_and_SR.pdf

Goal-aware tab check: common questions

Will a YouTube lecture count as work?

If the video fits your goal, yes. DoppiNow checks each video, not just the site. You can also mark any page "It's related" with one tap.

Does DoppiNow read the whole page?

No. It looks only at a few details such as the title, address, main heading and a short description, never the full text.

What happens on a new tab or a browser settings page?

Browser pages are always neutral, so they earn no XP and trigger no reminders.

Keep reading

Try it free for 7 days

Free for 7 days, no card to start. No blocking: just a gentle focus game in your browser.

Add to ChromeAll features