Freedom for Mac

CNET Editors' review

by: Jason Parker on February 02, 2010

Freedom is a free, ironically named application that's designed to increase productivity by temporarily disabling networking on your computer so you won't be able to visit Web sites, send or receive e-mail, or get distracted by anything else over the Internet.

In Freedom's simple, spare interface, you set the number of minutes that you want your computer to be offline (totaling anywhere between 5 minutes and 8 hours), and you decide whether you want to allow access to your local network (for tasks like printing and file sharing) or completely disable all networking. In recent updates, Freedom now saves the time you select as the default, and it also better handles apps that require network access (such as apps that use your network for antipiracy safeguards).

The only way to circumvent the time limit and restore networking is by restarting your computer. Overall, this is a seemingly silly app--it's trivial to turn off networking on your computer manually--but many users may find that Freedom is a useful tool for limiting tempting distractions. For the truly inspired, the developer will even create a custom version of the app (with a five-seat license) for $250--if, for example, you absolutely need e-mail and Last.fm while you're working.