SymptomPause is a free browser extension for health anxiety. When you type a scary search into Google at 2am, it steps in before the results load and gives you thirty seconds to change your mind. I built it because I needed it.
Add to Chrome, free No account, no tracking. Your data stays on your device.I have health anxiety. For years my nights went the same way: notice a twinge, search it, read for an hour, feel worse, search again. I knew the checking fed the fear. My GP told me, the books told me, half of Reddit told me. None of that knowledge was anywhere to be found at 2am with my thumb on the search bar.
I tried the big blockers too. I'd hit their wall mid-panic, feel trapped, and uninstall within the minute. A wall gave me one more thing to fight. Thirty seconds and a slow breath turned out to work better, so that's what I built.
SymptomPause is the tool I wish I'd had on my worst nights. If your search history looks like mine used to, it's for you.
Type "headache tumor" into Google, YouTube or Bing and the results never appear. You get a pause screen first, before the scary headlines can reach you.
The urge to check feels permanent. Ride it out for a minute without feeding it and it fades. The pause screen holds you for that minute with a breathing guide and one big button that closes the tab.
Turning the protection off takes 24 hours to kick in. The 2am version of you can't undo what the Tuesday-afternoon version of you decided. Your GP's site, NHS 111 and appointment booking always work.
Every paused urge gets counted: which trigger caught it, and at what time of day. After two weeks, mine told me what I half knew already — it was always my heart, and it was always after midnight. That's the kind of thing you can take to a therapist. Counts only, stored on your device. Your actual searches are never saved anywhere.
A sample of the "Your pattern" view in Settings. Turn it off anytime; switching it off also deletes the counts.
Any blocker can hide WebMD. SymptomPause catches "chest pain am i dying" in the search bar itself, on Google, YouTube, Bing and DuckDuckGo.
Hard blocks get ripped out mid-spiral. I know because I ripped them out. A short delay with a breathing guide is easier to obey, so it stays installed.
Your spiral has its own vocabulary. "Lymph node", "left arm", whatever your search history keeps repeating. Add those words and they pause too. Nobody sees the list but you.
The popup tracks days without a spiral and urges you paused this week. Riding one out is a win, and it gets counted like one.
When the delay stops being enough, you can remove "continue anyway" from the pause screen. Set it on a good day. It holds on the bad ones.
No account, no server, no analytics. Your searches and settings stay in your browser. I couldn't read them if I wanted to.
In my experience, you don't stop by deciding to stop. The urge hits hardest at the exact moment your judgment is worst, so willpower loses at 2am. An interrupt from outside works better. SymptomPause stops the search before the results load and holds you for thirty seconds, and most urges don't survive the wait.
No. Appointment booking, NHS 111, GP portals and pharmacies stay open. Getting real care was never the problem.
You can try, and the extension expects you to. Turning it off takes 24 hours to kick in, so mid-panic you can't. If you want it tighter, strict mode removes the "continue anyway" option from the pause screen completely.
No. SymptomPause never diagnoses anything and never tells you you're fine, because it can't know that. If a symptom is new, severe or worrying you, see a clinician. They've heard it all before.
Nothing. The extension is free. If enough people use it I'll add a paid tier with extras like weekly reports, and the free version will stay free.