v1.0.0 Devlog IV: All Panic Modes

All 8 SwiftUI panic challenges ported to Tauri.

Games

Minesweeper, Wordle, 2048, Sudoku, Simon Says, and Pipes - all faithfully recreated. Pipes reuses the same Hamiltonian path + flood-fill algorithm with SVG drag-to-draw.

Competitive programming

Split-pane IDE: problem statement with LaTeX math on the left, code editor on the right. Initially wrote a custom regex-based highlighter but it choked on C++ - #include was treated as a comment start, leaking raw HTML span tags into the display. Swapped it for CodeMirror 6 with oneDark, which handles C++/Python/Java properly and gives bracket matching and auto-indent for free. Rust backend compiles and judges against test cases.

Config

All 8 modes in the panic dropdown with per-mode difficulty configs (grid size, guess count, target tile, etc). Configs in localStorage, panic mode in ~/.config/bliss/panic_mode.txt.

Next up: Schedule tab, statistics, and system tray.

Changelog

c572c3d feat(ui): add all panic mode challenges to Tauri GUI

v1.0.0 Devlog III: Settings & Configs

I started transferring over all of the features from the SwiftUI version almost 1:1, but with web technology I can make some of the UI a lot cooler and better!

What changed

1. Settings panel

• Sidebar + detail layout matching the SwiftUI version. Seven sections in the same order: Configs, Panic Challenge, Blocked Websites, Blocked Apps, Browsers, Troubleshooting, Uninstall.
• Icons from Lucide (Folder, ShieldAlert, Globe, LayoutGrid, Compass, Wrench, Trash2) instead of SF Symbols.
• Blocked websites has preset packs (Social Media, Entertainment, News, Gaming, Shopping) that toggle green when active. Apps and browsers show real icons extracted from .app bundles via sips.

2. Config profiles

• Save current websites/apps/browsers/panic settings as a named config. Configs stored as JSON in ~/.config/bliss/profiles/.
• Apply swaps everything at once - clears current config and loads the profile’s. Active config highlighted with color dot.
• Simpler flow than SwiftUI - no color picker, just save/apply/delete.

3. Native file pickers

• “Add App…” and “Add Browser…” open native macOS file dialogs via tauri-plugin-dialog, filtered to .app bundles. Same UX as the SwiftUI fileImporter.
• App icons extracted server-side in Rust: reads CFBundleIconFile from Info.plist, converts .icns to 64x64 PNG with sips, sends base64 to the frontend. Browser icons resolved via mdfind bundle ID lookup.

Next up: Schedule tab, statistics tab with activity heatmap, and system tray menubar.

v1.0.0 Devlog II: Tauri GUI Scaffold

I decided to use Tauri with Svelte because Svelte compiles to be lightweight and I am familiar with it. I don’t want to use many other web technologies as to keep this lightweight and also look clean and simple, I want to capture the aesthetic of the SwiftUI app.

Scaffolding the cross-platform GUI: timer, session start, and typing panic challenge.

What changed

1. Tauri + Svelte project setup

• Tauri v2 inside the existing repo (src-tauri/ for Rust, ui/ for Svelte 5 with runes) — Vite builds to dist/, Tauri serves it in a native webview.
• Rust backend shells out to the bliss CLI exactly like Swift’s BlissCommandRunner did.

2. Session timer with digit entry

• Polls /var/db/bliss_end_time every second; displays HH:MM:SS with an orange pulse in the last minute.
• No active session → right-to-left digit entry; Start button calls bliss start <minutes> via Rust.

3. Typing panic challenge

• Loads a random quote from quotes.txt; character-by-character coloring (green/red/grey) — same MonkeyType feel as Swift.
• Hidden textarea captures keystrokes; submit calls bliss panic --skip-challenge on completion.

4. Dark minimal UI

• Dark grey (#1a1a1a), centered layout, big timer — mirrors the Swift version’s aesthetic.
• SF Pro / system font stack; native on macOS, falls back to system sans-serif on Linux.

Next up: Tab navigation (Session/Settings), blocked sites/apps config UI, and menubar tray with countdown.

v1.0.0 Devlog I: Linux Time!!

Its finally time to add Linux support! So on the macOS version I wrote it in Swift so it would be native and super fast, and I didn’t want to use electron as its slow, so for the cross platform I decided to rewrite the GUI to Tauri so it can support macOS, now Linux, and later Windows!

Platform-abstracting the C++ backend: firewall, DNS flush, and process management.

What changed

1. Linux firewall implementation

• firewall_linux.cpp: full iptables/ip6tables impl mirroring macOS pfctl via a dedicated bliss chain.
• firewall_block.cpp wrapped in #ifdef __APPLE__; works on modern distros via the iptables-nft shim.

2. DNS cache flush

• Platform-guarded flush_dns(): macOS uses dscacheutil + mDNSResponder, Linux tries resolvectl, falls back to systemd-resolve, pokes nscd for legacy setups. Fails silently throughout.

3. Browser killing

• kill_browser_apps() now cross-platform via pkill -x. macOS-only helpers guarded behind #ifdef __APPLE__.

4. Build system

• CMakeLists.txt picks firewall source per platform. Best tested on Ubuntu 24.04 in UTM/VirtualBox; Docker needs --privileged for iptables.

Next up: Platform-abstract the daemon - systemd service files instead of launchd plists, and reworking the root helper socket.

Bliss v1.0.0 idea

One of the most requested features on Bliss has been Linux support. So that is what I have decided to do from now one! Here is the plan:

1. Make sure the CLI works on Linux (the daemon, the firewall filters, etc)
2. Convert the SwiftUI frontend to Tauri and Svelte

Bliss v0.5.0 Devlog

Ghost Window Fix

• Menubar “Open Bliss” no longer shows an empty window - intercepts close with orderOut instead of actually closing, keeping SwiftUI’s view tree alive

Scheduling

• New Schedule tab with 24h weekly calendar grid and schedule list
• Create schedules tied to saved configs - auto-triggers sessions at the set day/time
• 12-hour time picker with AM/PM, day-of-week toggles, click-to-type digit editing

Config System

• Renamed “Profiles” → “Configs” across the UI
• Color picker per config - popover swatch grid, colors carry through to schedule blocks on the calendar
• Auto-creates a “Default” config with common social media sites on first launch

Timer UI

• Replaced text field with a big --:-- display, right-to-left digit entry like a microwave timer
• Typed digits shift in from the right, backspace removes last digit, Enter starts session
• Same display becomes the live countdown during active sessions

Typing Panic

• 100% accuracy required (was 95%), larger text, no background box
• Wrong characters show underlined in red, extra chars get red background (MonkeyType-style)

Install Script

• Colored output with numbered steps, checkmarks, and a clean summary

Bliss v0.4.0 devlog

What Changed

• Added a statistics screen
• Added a simon says panic mode
• Merged the seperate blissbar into main GUI
• Renamed app from BlissGUI to just Bliss
• 2048 difficulty levels: Easy (128), Medium (512), Hard (2048)
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts for panic and start session with NSEvent-based recorder
• Settings sidebar navigation modeled after macOS System Settings
• Toggleable website preset packs in both settings and wizard
• Tile pop-in animations on 2048
• Timer pulse animation in the last minute of a session

Bug fixes and polish

• Deduplicated website display so www. variants don’t show twice
• Wizard website list now scrolls with a max height cap
• Improved add website field with plus icon and clearer placeholder
• Removed clutter text like keyboard shortcut hints
• Removed 2048 merge/error sounds, kept unlock sound
• Lightened stat cards and heatmap empty cells for dark mode visibility
• Removed focus rings from non-interactive settings elements
• Removed View Statistics button from main screen
• Removed heatmap background panel

Testing

• Built UI test suite covering all 6 game modes
• 60 tests, 203 assertions, all passing
• 255 total assertions across both test files

Known issues

• Wordle backspace key doesn’t work

Even More Panic Mode Challenges

I added a few more such as Sudoku, 2048, and Wordle!

Added Challs

Sudoku

• Fill in a 9x9 grid so ever row, col, and box has digits 1-9
• Three difficulties based on number of cells revealed
• Random generated puzzles + always solvable

2048

• Use arrow keys to slide tiles around
• Matching tiles add up and double
• Mimicked the normal UI

Wordle

• From New York Times Games.
• Guess five-letter word in six tries
• Green for right, yellow for wrong spot, grey for not in the word.

More Panic Mode Challenges

I made it easier to write new panic mode challenges and then I added two: minesweeper and that pipes / flow game
I also went and fixed some bugs with the uninstall and made the panic modes auto complete and no longer need confirmation. I also speed up the install script a lot (the old one tried to compile the whole thing instead of use the precompiled binary)

Panic Mode Abstraction

• Each challenge is in a single .swift file that defines an enum with a static PanicChallengeDefinition which has a bunch of details, a wrapper view that reads config from BlissViewModel via @EnvironmentObject, and the game view itself which takes an onUnlock: () async -> Bool callback.
• It is registered in PanicChallengeRegistry.all, with a size/difficulty @Published property + sync/save methods to BlissViewModel, and a @Published property to SetupWizardState.

Added Challs

• Minesweeper:
  • Left click to dig, right click to flag
  • Mines are placed down after the first click
  • Three sizes for 8x8, 12x12, 16x16
  • Uses the google doodle color scheme because its fire
• Pipes
  • Draw paths between dots of the same color and fill every cell
  • Puzzles randomly generated and always solvable

Bliss v0.3.0 release

There is now a github release for version v0.3.0! I won’t ship this on flavortown just yet and will most likely wait till v0.4.0 (more panic modes!), but it is on github for you to download: https://github.com/zainmarshall/bliss/releases/tag/v0.3.0

Setup Wizard

• Since I’ve moved from CLI to GUI, the setup process can be a lot better
• There is now a setup wizard that takes you through each step: blocking websites, apps, browsers, picking panic mode and configuring its difficulty.

Competitive Programming Panic Mode

• I edited the Codeforces panic mode a bit and renamed it to competetive programming. I then used CSES problems beacuse they were easier to parse than codeforces problems.
• I added Zen++ language support in it (my custom language)
• LaTeX rendering!

Config Menu Redesign

• Made it look more like an apple settings menu, so a lot cleaner
• Aligned dropdowns, added keyboard shortcuts
• The config menu shows the App Icons next to the apps so it looks nice
• Added a panic challenge to uninstallation

CLI Fix

• Now that it is a GUI based and not CLI I made the CLI redirect to the GUI on most tasks and then also they are synced now.

Ok I know the last few changes have been UI changes and bug fixes, and this one will be the last of those.

• I added a makefile so like I can just run make all and it recompiles and reinstalls everything, which is very nice.
• I polished the UI a bit more and removed most bugs.
• Added difficulty tags to codeforces problems
• Panic mode randomly gives you a codeforces problem of matching difficulty
• The thing I want to figure out now is the best way to get problems into the app, as right now I am manually copying and pasting codeforces problems over and tagging them by difficulty, I need to find a systematic way to do this
• There is one bug in the timer in the UI I need to fix. In the menubar it counts down smoothly, but in the GUI its buggy, I need to do and fix that. Thats all thanks for reading!

1. I reworked the UI to be cleaner and moved all the configuration stuff to its own tab.
2. You can also now configure which panic mode you want.
3. There were also some bugs in the codeforces, that has been resolved now.
4. You can open the GUI from the menu bar by clicking Command + O when it is open or clicking Open Menubar

From the start I never really wanted to do the typing challenge as the panic mode, I kinda just did it because I wanted to see the reaction to Bliss without pouring too much time into it. What I had always wanted to do was for you to be forced o solve a codeforce or a leetcode problem, but the logistics of this confused me. Would I just call and api or would I make the testcase runner work locally? How would I prevent just copying and pasting code which makes the panic easier to bypass? A lot of questions I still need to answer. But I did get a bit of the codeforces implemented! I parsed quite a few questions from the website and I also made a nice swift ui.

Changelog

1. Codeforces panic mode
2. UI for codeforces panic mode

First, I want to say thank you everyone for the incredible votes! I’m very grateful that people liked this project :)

Now two things I observed from the feedback:

1. A GUI would be nice
2. Linux support would be nice

So of those two linux support is probably the more difficult one given that my software is pretty nicely integrated with MacOS, so what I think I’ll do is polish up the MacOS version and then given all that I have already done port it to Linux. This would involve changing a bit of the code, but not that much.

I started working on the GUI:

1. (almost) every CLI command is now in the GUI, you can start, you can panic, and you can config
2. The GUI is made using Swift so its super fast and just MacOS native, and the menubar was already native.
3. The way it works is like the GUI is essentially just running CLI commands because like that was the easiest way to make it, I already spent a long time making the CLI commands so nice, so I added a few more for the GUI to use and then yeah thats how it works
4. I made a UI for the typing test, and I do say this is an improvement over the CLI version and I do see how a GUI will positively benefit bliss.

Note the UI is very buggy and sometimes just desyncs with the CLI version and idk why so um yeah this update may take a while to get fully finished. Anyways, thanks again for all the support!

Ok so this devlog addresses the feedback given in my ship of this project. Also note:
When you’re demoing it, you have to type in the right url, youtube.com is not the full thing its www.youtube.com, but now the code should auto handle that but just in case.

Changelog

• Added configurable browser close list (bliss config browser add/remove/list)
• Browsers now close and automatically reopen on session start to reset connections
• When adding a website (eg youtube.com auto add both youtube.com and www.youtube.com)
• Added bliss repair to restart the root helper and clear stale state
• Added config ownership auto‑repair via root helper
• Fixed session “already running” mismatch between CLI and root helper
• Added PF state drop for HTTP/HTTPS to reset active connections
• Improved installer quickstart + added unsaved work warning
• Updated README with new commands and warnings

Ok I said the last one would be the last, but there were so many bugs that I fixed. Error messages weren’t working, configs broken, but those all good now :)! Also I spent like 2 hours editing this video (idk why it took so long). This is the demo video to all windows and linux users who would be unable to install the app so they can still see how it would work and vote on it.

Ok, so I think this will be my final devlog for bliss, at least for the first ship. I have made a bunch of small polishing changes. Here is a list:

1. Before if bliss was inactive but you ran bliss panic, it would make you solve the puzzle then say “never active”, now it says that before and doesn’t make you do a pointless challenge
2. I added configurable quote lengths. I took 100 short, medium, long, and huge (what monkeytype calls thicc) quotes from monkey type, stored them in txt files, and then made it so you can type bliss configure quote and then change the length
3. I made it so you can’t run config anything while bliss is active, so you can’t cheat and try to break out of it, you have to use bliss panic.
4. Fixed a few errors.

I added a config menu for blocked apps. Unlike website where I could just make it a command, bliss config website add , for apps bliss needs the path to the .app, the bundle id, and the process name. Instead of forcing the user to type this out, I thought of a much better solution: all apps live in the Applications folder, so just list out all of those files and let then select which one, and that will give bliss the direct path from where it can get all the rest of the information itself. So the way I went about this first was by using fuzzy finder, fzf, and it would just start an fzf over your apps folder when you typed bliss config app add, and then when you select one it would do all the bliss things. This is nice as fzf is fast and keyboard based, but I want bliss to require as few external installs as possible, so I made a different menu if fzf is not installed, and I think that one works pretty well. I also like made the remove menu very similar but instead of on the apps folder, its on the config file. The no fzf command has a one time search feature than a numbered list which I showed off in the second screen recording.

Attachments

The first attached screen recording shows config app add and config app remove with fzf installed.
The second shows those two without fzf installed.

1. I added blocking for desktop apps. It works on like proper apps, which is mostly everything, but for odd things like Minecraft which launches a java thing, which apple screen time is notoriously bad at catching, I have avoided for now.

Implementation

During a low, blissd wakes up every few seconds and checks the blocked apps list. For each app on it, it attempts to force quit the process that matches to the app’s path or process name. MAKE SURE YOU SAVE WORK BEFORE STARTING BLISS AS IT WILL FORCEFULLY SHUTDOWN.

Attachments

I have attached a simple screen recording of me trying to launch a blocked app. In this case the app I have blocked is Prism Launcher (a minecraft launcher).

I added an install script that installs the bliss cli, blissd, and the menu bar app, and blissroot. It is under scripts/install.sh. To go along with it, I wrote an uninstall script that uninstalls the menu-bar, removes the daemons, and deletes all the config and storage files. It also cleans up /etc/hosts and the pf. It is gated by the same typing puzzle as bliss panic. Also about the blissroot I talked about above, it just makes it so that you don’t have to type sudo each time. Bliss needs to edit protected files, so for start and panic, you used to need to use sudo, but now on install it gives itself a daemon making it so you don’t need to.

Packet filter

I noticed in the blocker, if you already had the tab open, for example youtube, the browser would sometimes cache the ip and thus not need to query the DNS, thus bypassing the filter. So now bliss takes the domains, gets their ips, and then stores them so those ips are blocked on a network level using a packet filter table.

CLI Cleanup

Also, I cleaned up the CLI output and added bliss status. Status now shows remaining time and whether the firewall table is active. Sometimes in the code I had left placeholder output on certain commands, I removed that and made the error messages more helpful.

Attachments

The attached screenshots show bliss –help and bliss status.

I added a real config system for websites. Instead of hardcoding YouTube, Bliss now stores domains in ~/.config/bliss/blocks.txt and the CLI supports add/remove/list. When Bliss starts, it reads this file and blocks everything inside it.
The attached screen shot shows those commands being used.

##Bliss Panic Mode
I implemented what I call “panic” mode. Currently, if you start a block of some amount of minutes, ti will run for that time and it is impossible to exit. However, that can be unsafe or impractical, lets say you end to watch a youtube video for a class assignment or smth, or you just need to break out of the block, panic mode is the way. Instead of typing in a password or just clicking Unblock for 1 hour like it is in other blocks, you have to solve a puzzle. You have to do an activity that makes this feel a lot more painful and tedious, to incentivize you to not.

Future Steps

Right now its very simple, its a typing test where you need to get >=95% on a quote to pass. The quotes are pulled from a quotes.txt file. This is the test I will stick to now, but later I will switch to other puzzle types, maybe solving a leetcode problem. Also for testing purposes the quotes are short, cuz I’m too lazy to type long quotes, but I will prob make them longer on release.

Attachment

I have attached a screen recording showing the test after running bliss panic.

Formerly, the way bliss worked was just by starting and stopping it (well i hadn’t coded in a real stop, so just starting it) from the terminal, and the block would kinda be this thing in the background. It didn’t feel like it was a real app, and idk that didn’t sit well with me, and also there was no interceptor of how much time had passed. To solve this I added a very very simple menubar item. It says bliss and then it is a minute and seconds countdown. It stays running the background always, and is a launch item, so using LaunchAgent it stays running all the time and launches at computer reboot. So its there any time bliss is working. It will refresh and show the active timer ticking down on a bliss start command. The menu bar is written as a very simple swift application (one main.swift file) compiled to a binary.

I attached a screen recording showing me starting a timer and the menu bar timer ticking down.

1. I implemented a background timer so the lock will actually stop after the time you specified when you run bliss start minutes and not just run indefinitely. The lock was already persistent on terminal closure and computer reseting seeing as how /etc/hosts works, but I had to figure out a way to make the timer persistent, so even if you turn off your computer and come back, if the end time is ended I need to make sure to unlock the block and revert the /etc/hosts. To achieve this I added a small daemon (very creatively named blissd) that runs in the background via launchd. When you start a timed lockout, its saved to a file, and blissd reads that file and automatically unblocks when the timer is done. As you can see in the attached screenshot, when running bliss status you can see the time remaining, and that is constantly updating with the daemon.

I got the first block working, this blocks websites on any browser and is independent of the browser because what it does is filter DNS requests and not give certain websites access to the internet.

I have attached three screenshots. The first shows just what happens when you run bliss start and the second shows what it does to /etc/hosts. It modifies it such that all of the websites in the config (I haven’t implemented the config so right now its hard coded to youtube) will be added to /etc/hosts and be blocked from receiving internet. The third image just shows what happens when you try to visit the tab, no internet!

I decided on the architecture of this project: you will primarily interact with it through a CLI and I will write it in C++ and build using CMake. I added some simple CLI fillers and a help menu with all the commands. The commands that I have so far coded in are start, panic, and config, which all just return a debug message for now. bliss –help will list all available commands.