Internet addiction is on the rise, especially among younger users. With an endless stream of games and videos, and doomscrolling on social media, stepping away from the screen isn’t easy. But cutting off access entirely can feel harsh—and sometimes does more harm than good.
While “Blocking” access is one of the most used ways to control access, we feel there may be a softer way to disturb network access, by emulating bad networks and silently making the activity less “fun”.
Aversive therapy is a way to break a bad habit by making the thing you want to stop feel unpleasant — for example, adding a bad taste, smell, or mild sickness so your brain stops linking it with pleasure.
That’s why we built Disturb : a smarter, more flexible way to encourage healthy breaks. Instead of shutting things down, it gently disrupts overuse to help users find balance—no drama, no digital detox meltdowns. And by significantly disturbing the experience, we believe we can disrupt AI-based algorithms in short videos to make them less addictive.
Use Cases for Disturb:
- You want to stop watching TikTok late at night because it affects your sleep, but blocking the app completely makes it tempting to just turn the rule off.
- Solution: Create a Disturb rule for TikTok, apply it to your device, and schedule it at night.
- When using TikTok during this time, videos will load more slowly, and the experience will feel less smooth. This can make it easier to stop scrolling on your own.
- You want your kids to take healthy breaks from the Internet, but fully blocking access can feel too harsh and cause frustration.
- Solution: Create a Disturb rule for Internet, apply it to your kids' devices, and schedule it during certain times.
- When the rule is active, websites and apps will load more slowly. While your kids can still use the Internet, they may be more likely to switch to other activities like sports, play with toys, or spend time with family.
NOTE:
- With great power comes great responsibility. Please use this feature for good.
- This feature is experimental and was invented to help parents encourage healthy screen time habits for kids. Disturb may not work for everyone.
- It will remain in beta as we continue to gather feedback.
- What is Disturb?
- How to create a Disturb rule
- Disturbance Levels: Annoying and Super Annoying
- Setting your own Custom Disturb rule
What is Disturb?
Disturb is a new available Rule Action.
By simulating a poor network experience, Firewalla slows down traffic to selected apps, making them frustrating or less enjoyable to use, without completely blocking access, encouraging users to take a break on their own.
Disturb Requirements:
- A Firewalla Gold, Purple, or Orange series unit is required.
- Firewalla must be in Router mode.
- Box version 1.981 or later.
- App version 1.66 or later.
How to create a Disturb rule
To create a new Disturb rule, go to your box’s main screen > tap Rules > Add Rule. For the Rule Action, choose Disturb .
The target of the Disturb rule can be one of the following:
- Internet (all internet sites)
- Target Lists
- IP Addresses
- Domains
- Apps
- Netflix
- Roblox
- TikTok
- YouTube
- …more apps will be added in the future!
Select any device, user, group, or network to apply the Disturb rule.
Like other allow/block rules, you can schedule Disturb rules to occur during certain periods of a day, week, or as a one-time rule.
Like all rules, you can also pause a Disturb rule from the rule detail page if you’d like to give temporary, undisturbed access and resume it at any time.
Time Limit Disturb
- Requires App 1.68. Learn more about this release here.
Disturb can also be used as an action after a Time Limit rule is reached. For single apps that support Disturb, use the Advanced section to choose Disturb as an action.
Control Button Disturb
Disturb can be used in Control Buttons to quickly disrupt traffic with one tap. Control Buttons are ways to quickly manage access to certain targets, such as the Internet or specific apps, directly from a Main Screen Shortcut or Device Detail Page.
For all Disturb-supported targets, tap the Control Button and select the Disturb tab.
Disturb via Control Buttons will use the default Annoying or Custom settings.
Disturbance Levels: Annoying and Super Annoying
Disturb supports two main modes: Annoying and Super Annoying.
- Annoying: The default setting for all Disturb rules. Partially interferes with selected traffic to make user activities slightly frustrating to use.
- Super Annoying: Heavily interferes with selected traffic to make user activities frustrating to use.
These modes are only available when the Disturb is matching a specific application. If the rule matches the Internet or other targets, only Custom mode is available.
From a Disturb rule detail page, or when creating a new Disturb rule, tap Disturbance Level under the Advanced section to select how annoying to make it.
We recommend you start with "Annoying." If this doesn’t slow down activity enough, try changing the Disturbance Level to “Super Annoying” as needed.
Setting your own Custom Disturb rule
Different apps, devices, and platforms may have different behaviors under the same settings. For example, even with the same Disturbance Level on the same app, iOS devices may be impacted more than Android devices, or desktop browsers may perform differently than mobile apps.
- Use with caution. Recommended only for advanced users.
- For Disturb rules NOT matching Apps, only custom mode is available.
If you feel like the preset modes are too restrictive or not enough, you can customize any Disturb rule. Tap on Disturbance Level and choose Custom. You’ll be able to fine-tune the effect with the following parameters:
-
Rate Limit (Kbps/Mbps): Limits the maximum bandwidth allowed for the app.
- Lower values can throttle or reduce the experience of video streaming apps.
- For example, 1 Mbps may reduce videos to lower resolutions.
-
Drop Packet Rate (%): Randomly drop a percentage of traffic packets.
- Higher values can disrupt apps expecting stable connections.
- For example, 10-20% can make apps repeatedly retry connections.
-
Latency (ms): Adds additional delay to specific traffic.
- Higher values can interfere with gaming, like PvP or FPS games, where timing is critical.
- For example, 150-250 ms can slow down in-game actions.
Note: As Disturb is still in beta, we’re looking for more testing on each app/category for different devices and platforms. If you find a setting that works great for you, please let us know!
Comments
10 comments
I just tried using this feature and found it a little frustrating as a rule. My kids aren't on their tablets at the same time every day so a schedule doesn't work. It would be annoying to set two different disturb rules for my kids tablets and individually pause or unpause them. Instead, I think disturb should be a control where we can just tap on Disturb on a certain device to start a timer similar to blocking Internet or video. Or, if it's going to continue to be a rule, maybe there can be a countdown timer option such that after one hour of Netflix for instance, then disturb will activate for an hour (configurable times).
Hi Jon R, thanks for the feedback! I'll forward this to our devs and see if we can support Disturb as an action after a Time Limit rule, or something similar.
Beautiful! I've been doing this with the smart queue for a while. Thanks for making it an option. ❤️
A countdown timer would be amazing. For my kid (and I suspect he’s not alone), the abruptness of a Time Limit cutoff is really aggravating. TBH, I sympathize. Offering a short transition window to finish an activity—or just to let it sink in that it’s ending soon—could be a real help. Thanks for considering.
i was looking for a feature like that for ages. Very smart.Easy to setup and working great.
Would be nice to Disturb a category like "All Gaming Sites" the same way you can block.
The disturb option isn't available on my rules even though I have the updated app and firewalla software. What should I do?
Hi Gnut, is your Firewalla running in Router mode? This is required to use Disturb.
Why can't Firewalla Blue Plus have this feature? It's a shame that Firewalla is slowly forgetting the customers that helped them grow... :(
Hi Michael Santos, Disturb is based on the Firewalla Smart Queue feature. Since Blue Plus only supports the simple version of Smart Queue, we are unable to support Disturb on Blue Plus.
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