Extra Security

An optional helper for Kill Distraction on Mac

Kill Distraction for Mac comes from the Mac App Store, where every app runs in a sandbox. There, an app can cover another app, but it cannot quit it, and it cannot come back by itself once it is quit. Extra Security is a small helper you install yourself. It does those two things, and nothing else.

The download will be here when Kill Distraction for Mac is on the App Store

What it adds

Blocked apps are really quit. During a session, the apps on your list are quit instead of being covered, and quit again if you open them.
Hardcore holds. If Kill Distraction is quit in the middle of a Hardcore session, it is opened again within seconds, and your apps stay closed in the meantime.

Everything else in Kill Distraction works the same without it.

How it behaves

It listens to Kill Distraction only. macOS checks how the app is signed before the helper reads a word, and the app checks the helper before it hands it anything.
It runs only while a session needs it. With no session, nothing of it is running.
No administrator password. It runs as you, with your rights, and macOS lists it in System Settings, General, Login Items & Extensions. It makes leaving a session harder, not impossible: it is there against an impulse, not against you.
It collects nothing. It makes no connection to the internet. What it has to close, and until when, stays on your Mac.
Browsers are asked to quit, never forced, so your tabs and logins are kept. Any other blocked app is asked first and forced after three seconds. Unsaved work in an app you chose to block can be lost.

Install

Download Extra Security and open the disk image.
Drag Kill Distraction Extra Security to your Applications folder.
Open it and choose Turn on. macOS tells you a background item was added.
In Kill Distraction, Settings now shows Extra Security on.

It needs macOS 15 or later, and Kill Distraction for Mac from the Mac App Store.

Remove

Open Kill Distraction Extra Security, choose Turn off, then move it to the Trash. While a Hardcore session is running it cannot be turned off from its own window: that is what you asked of it when you started the session. macOS keeps its own switch for it in System Settings at all times.

Questions

Write to killdistraction-support@googlegroups.com.