InspiredChrome

Upgrade the way you use Chrome to be more productive and stick to your New Year's Resolutions!

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Inspiration

When me and my brother were thinking about New Year's Resolutions, we wanted to try to create monthly challenges. Our first challenge (for January) is not watching a minute of Youtube for the whole month. I did some research to try to find a software which could track the time we spent on Youtube. I could not really find anything simple enough for us to use so I thought - why not make a Chrome extension to do just that? Not only would I be able to track the time I spend on Youtube (and prove to my brother that I have not watched a single minute), but I could also learn how to build a Chrome extension. My goal for 2022 is to learn a new technology every month - this month it is Chrome extensions, so I will be working on InspiredChrome (adding new features and hopefully growing it) for the rest of this month.

What it does

Simply put, it tracks the time you spend on Youtube. Simple yet effective.

Think you might be able to outsmart it by having Youtube open in the background or in another window? Doesn't work - InspiredChrome will notice this and will continue counting up the time.

This Chrome extension could be used by many productivity oriented people who want more accountability, ranging from teens who realise they are watching too much Youtube to full on productivity gurus.

How I built it

I built the Chrome extension in Javascript, HTML and CSS using VSCode. Since I have never developed a Chrome extension before, I did a lot of research and followed a very helpful tutorial from Traversy Media.

I built the website using Wordpress, as it is significantly faster than programming and much more flexible than other no-code tools.

Challenges I ran into

As always in programming, I came across many bugs, which was especially challenging due to my lack of experience with developing Chrome extensions. I had to do a lot of research to troubleshoot some errors I was having with the Chrome extension (particularly with background.js) and on how to use Wordpress (since I've never used it either).

Accomplishments that I'm proud of and what I learned

  • Completed this entire project on my own in a day: built an awesome Chrome extension and website
  • Learnt two new technologies: Chrome extension and Wordpress development
  • Developed a Chrome extension that me and my brother will use for our No-Youtube January challenge
  • Completed a few goals: learn a new technology every month + make 3 contributions to Github every week for the whole of 2022
  • This is my second hackathon and I have to say - I love hackathons!

What's next for InspiredChrome

  1. More features: I have a number of new features planned, ranging from productivity music to leaderboards, which I hope will make InspiredChrome an even better productivity tool!
  2. Community growth: with the newsletter and Telegram community I set up, I hope to create a fun and interesting productivity community
  3. Team: to speed up development / growth I would love to build a team of people who want to help grow InspiredChrome
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