Blocked sites
A bare domain covers the whole site and everything under it. Add a path to block one part of a site and leave the rest open.
example.com blocks the site and its subdomains. *.example.com blocks subdomains but leaves the main site open. example.com/watch blocks one section. *word* blocks any address containing that word. A pattern wrapped in slashes is treated as a regular expression.
Allowed sites
The list that matters when everything else is shut: allow-list mode and strict focus sessions both read from here.
The list
Lockdown
Shut everything except the list above, for a fixed number of hours. Nothing overrides it while it runs: not the pause switch, not a one-site exception, not restarting the browser. It ends by itself.
Check the list above first. Whatever is on it is all you will be able to reach until the time is up.
0hremaining
Categories
Bundled lists, matched on this computer. Nothing is fetched and no record of where you go is sent anywhere.
These lists cover the sites people name when they ask for a category, not every domain that exists. The adult category also matches obvious keywords and adult top-level domains. For a child's machine, pair this with filtering at the router or DNS, which a browser extension cannot replace.
Keywords
Block any address containing a word. Turn on page scanning to catch the word in the page itself, which is how search results and feeds get past an address-only filter.
Schedules
By default the rules are live around the clock. Switch to windows and they apply only inside the times you set.
Windows
Block page
What you see when a site is stopped. A sentence you wrote yourself lands harder than anything we could write for you.
Send somewhere else instead
Insights
Counted on this computer and stored on this computer. Sixty days, then the oldest day falls off.
Blocks, last seven days
Where the time went today
Most-blocked sites, last seven days
Password
Backup
Everything Gatesites knows lives in this browser's own storage. Nothing is uploaded, so moving to another machine means moving this file.
Export
Rules, categories, keywords, schedules and block page. Not your statistics, and not the password.
Import
Replaces the rules with the ones in the file. The password and statistics stay as they are.