how do you stop doomscrolling on a laptop?

doomscrolling is scrolling past the point where you are enjoying it, usually through news or social feeds, often while something else is waiting. on a laptop it has a particular shape: you are mid-task, you hit a small snag, and a new tab is already open on a feed before you notice choosing it.

stopping it is less about deciding to stop and more about changing what happens around that moment.

why it happens

most scrolling sessions follow the same loop. something sets it off: a pause in your work, a notification, a suggestion as you type in the address bar. you open the site with almost no friction. the feed has no bottom and nothing that tells you to stop, so you continue until something outside interrupts you.

each part of that loop can be changed. you can remove the trigger, slow down the opening, add a stopping point, or make continuing less rewarding. doing two or three of these together works much better than any one on its own.

remove what sets it off

start with the easy wins:

• close the tabs. a feed left open in a tab is an invitation every time you switch.
• remove the bookmarks and the shortcuts on your new tab page.
• clean up the address bar. in Chrome, start typing a site, highlight the suggestion with the arrow keys and press Shift+Delete (on a Mac, Shift+Fn+Delete) to remove it from your history suggestions.
• turn off the site’s browser notifications in its site settings.

none of these stops you from going. they just take away the nudges that make you go without deciding to.

put a pause in front of it

a few seconds between typing the address and seeing the feed is enough to turn a reflex back into a choice. it goes straight at the part of the habit that depends on speed: the reward arriving the instant you ask for it.

the pause should be short enough that you don’t resent it and long enough to notice. five to twenty seconds works. if it grows a little each time you come back the same day, it quietly reflects how the day is going without you having to keep count.

give it an end

feeds are built without stopping points, so add your own. the simplest is seeing the time: a visible count of how long you have been on the site today changes how the twentieth minute feels. a gentle question every few minutes, like whether you meant to stay this long, does the same thing more directly.

make continuing less rewarding

if you keep scrolling, it helps if the scrolling itself is less satisfying. turning the site gray removes much of the visual reward, as our guide to making Instagram boring explains. making the page scroll more slowly means each flick of the trackpad brings less new content, which breaks the rhythm.

tell someone

the habits that stick usually have someone else in them. agreeing with a friend that they’ll hear about it if you go over a limit you set is a different kind of motivation than a promise to yourself. our guide to setting up an accountability partner covers how to do that without it feeling like surveillance.

how dimmer does it

dimmer is a Chrome extension that does each of these on the sites you choose:

• the trigger: it hides feeds and tucks the sites’ results away on Google search, and with pro it hides their suggestions as you type on Google and quiets their tabs in the background.
• the pause: a dimmed site opens after a short countdown, five, ten or twenty seconds depending on the strength you pick, and it grows each time you continue that day, up to a minute. the way back is always the bigger button.
• the end: a small badge shows your minutes on the site today, and with pro a check-in asks every few minutes why you’re there.
• the reward: the site turns gray, and with pro scrolling takes more effort, videos play slower and only the middle of the page stays in view.
• someone else: you can write a promise and add a partner who gets an email if you break it.

nothing is ever blocked. you can always keep going, it just takes a little longer and feels a little flatter, which is often enough.

if you’re weighing this against a blocker, our page on focus blockers compares the approaches.