How to get rid of Stayfocusd chrome extension?

I installed Stayfocusd extension to boost my productivity and minimize time spent reading about dietary habits of Mongol soldiers in Genghis Khan's time, or the detailed differences between shallots and onions.

However I must have set some settings wrong as now I'm not able to visit any site. Even the browser settings page won't open and thus I can't remove the extension.

And worst of all I think I set the blocking period to be 1000 hours.

I can't reinstall chrome as I have my bookmarks and other settings in it. Is there a way to get rid of this evil plugin? (Like starting chrome in safe mode or something)

6 Answers

Go to Preferences → Extensions, and from the list click remove (bin icon on the right)

If that does not help, you can try the following:

• On Windows 7: close Chrome and go to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions and remove the offending extension
• On Ubuntu 12.10 either:
  • go to /home/<username>/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions and remove the extension
  • Launch Chrome from the terminal with the -incognito (or --incognito?) flag and remove the extension

I found an easier way to get rid of it on a Mac. Go to Chrome's Tools > Task manager, find stayfocusd and End process, then you can get to extensions page.

This is an old question, but I'll answer it anyway in case someone else might find it helpful:

Go to System Preferences, and set the system time forward by a couple days or so. Simple as that.

Right click on the extension icon and then click "Remove from Chrome..." That doesn't involve opening a new Chrome tab, so it works even when the "Nuclear Option" is activated.

This was an epic headache for Mac OS. I don't know about other OS, but with Mac OS these Chrome Extensions are hashed with unique identifiers. I had to /Users/{your username}/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/ and search for stayfocusd, delete a whole bunch of keys inside the Preferences file. This led me to a key value laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji, I have no idea if this is unique on each system or if this is a Google Chrome Store internal hash value. Anyway, I got Chrome free of this beast by FIRST closing Chrome, then deleting all references to stayfocusd AND laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji after searching the /Users/{your username}/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/ directory.

If you are on Chrome os You go to more tools and click task-manger end the extention that is stayfoucesd and go to the extentions page and delete it