I just deleted an app a month until I was happy. My phone got so boring after a few months of this I started forgetting it when leaving home. Ended up using it so little on the go, wifi was enough and canceled my cell phone plan.
Been four years since I had cell service or regularly carried any internet capable devices and I have never been happier.
My anxiety has plummeted and my attention span and productivity have skyrocketed. I do not have a phone as a security blanket anymore and feel so much more confident in public.
Smartphones are optional for most people, but if you are forced to carry one, keep it in airplane mode whenever possible and only use it when solving the specific problem that forces you to carry it that you lack any alternatives for.
If you need mobile entertainment buy a paper book.
Cool idea. Amazingly they've found a way to put "in-app purchases" though.
This app could just be an image set as your lock screen background.
I've found a good way to discourage mindless phone staring is to set the display to monochrome (e.g. through colorblind emulation). The decreased visual stimulation seems to have an effect on me, at least until I want to see a photo or video in colour and go back to normal.
The "in-app purchases" are for small complementary features, like making the screen appear on a schedule, making it impossible to skip the screen, and adding a lock button to lock the screen. Those features aren't essential for the app to function.
> This app could just be an image set as your lock screen background.
Well, yes and no. In the app, you can interact with the prompts. There is a history of your itneraction. You can export it and then analyze it if needed.
> I've found a good way to discourage mindless phone staring is to set the display to monochrome (e.g. through colorblind emulation). The decreased visual stimulation seems to have an effect on me, at least until I want to see a photo or video in colour and go back to normal.
+1 here. I have always had this setting on closer to bedtime.
The point is, everyone believes all apps should be free when this developer spent time building, testing, and iterating to come out with quite the useful app. And the developer respects users, so they chose to monetize in a way that doesn’t collect our data or shove ads in our faces.
It is totally fair to charge for work you've done - but then again, in my opinion, not everything needs to be built with some profit in mind (not talking about this app in particular now).
I think it's really refreshing to find an app that doesn't lock any features behind a paywall or makes using it more cumbersome unless you pay. I'm mostly okay with one-time payments though.
Just because you invested some time into making a project doesn't mean that you absolutely need to make some money to make it "worth" it. Hell, most open-source software is built on free/voluntary labor.
> not everything needs to be built with some profit in mind (not talking about this app in particular now).
I agree, and I make many projects for fun and find it rewarding when others use what I've built. But that is a decision that I make myself, for my own work. I never feel like I have the right to tell others whether they should build something with profit in mind or not.
I understand the sentiment from a user's perspective, I really do.
I have been totally burned out by having to maintain all my free apps in the Play Store though, lately. Even a simple non-internet-using app needs an update every year and needs to comply with new bullshit policies every few months. It has totally changed my opinion on free vs paid apps. I still despise subscription models, but I absolutely understand that there's just no free apps out there anymore. It just costs too much of my time to keep doing it for free.
I've actually been talking about the developer's perspective as well - I have a couple of personal projects that I've invested quite a bit of time into but I still don't feel the need to try to find a way to monetize them.
I can definitely see your point though. Maybe an option would be open sourcing your app? (considering it's already free anyway) - that way you could maybe find some contributors to make it easier to keep up with everything.
Agree. I had a free app with 100000 downloads, no ads and 4.5 rating on Play store, it is no longer there because I got fed up with Google's nagging. If I will do free things going forward, I will do them outside closed ecosystems.
Also agree, and would also include paid apps as well!
I had a paid app which was a one time payment and was not doing anything special regarding permissions (no internet, nothing like that), but since it wasn't was bringing much revenue (some 3$-4$ per year), I let the Play Store remove it automatically. I couldn't justify adding the absurd data policies (since I wasn't using any user data) and the cost of updating it regularly.
Sorry for my 100 users, that cannot reinstall the app anymore!
How would you suggest to compensate devs for developing and maintaining such apps?
Personally I would much prefer that developers lock poweruser features behind a paywall rather than plaster ugly ads all over the place. Making it a paid app works too, but likely 95% of the potential userbase would not try the app if they had to reach for their wallets first.
(I would leave the comment at that, but it would probably come across as a bit facetious and would fail any 'low-effort' test. But I genuinely mean it: remove the necessity to obtain a certain amount of money every month, and all of a sudden, people would be able to create, share, and enjoy for free.
> How would you suggest to compensate devs for developing and maintaining such apps?
As a developer, I feel more than sufficiently compensated by seeing people use and enjoy my work and thanking me. Getting featured on Hacker News would make my day; nay, year.
I just need to be able to eat and use a computer. I shouldn't have to prove myself valuable just to be allowed to live. I think everybody, regardless of what they do, deserve a livable basic income.
Never used 'Google Play Pass' and haven't explored it from a dev perspective. If that's something like a toggle in Google Play Console then I see no problem enabling it.
same thing worked for me. on iphone, ios 18 introduced a way to apply shades to everything, including app icon and notification counters. since i made the entire thing darker, i've stopped using instagram. i couldn't believe that such a small thing could do wonders. probably the same thing can be achieved by disabling the notification counter, but i think it's better to have it when you want to look for it, but make it not pop out into your eyes.
> Amazingly they've found a way to put "in-app purchases" though.
I've been so happy slowly going through my phone and removing every single app on my phone that has either ads or in-app purchases. I don't miss a single one.
Great! Apps like these are sorely needed. My feedback would be, apart from what others are saying about sub vs one-time purchase, to look at what Leechblock firefox extension is doing.
The key point is to make it harder (but not impossible) for me to use the phone. A "Do you need this?" is a great start, but since I can easily sneak by, I will soon do that. Even if I click "1 minute" to get a reminder, that should not be a simple notification, but back to the large big screen covering things.
What LB does is genius. You can enable a barrier so that if you reeeeeeally need to, you can get around, but it's annoying and time consuming, and thus the quick loop of "pick up phone and get stuck" is broken. The barrier in LB can be to type a (long) passphrase, or my favorite: a 64-char random string which cannot be copy-pasted. You need to manually look at 2-3 chars at a time and replicate the whole thing. Very effective.
But again, also the snap back to reality thing. If I keep using it, throw up a big overlay with a good question "Is your attention well spent?" for example. Make me wait before I can continue.
Advanced reminders are going to be a thing for the next big release. I agree that one problem is to pass the unlock, but staying on track with your intention is a different story. One periodical notification with static text can in theory fix that, but the chances are low in comparison to the full-screen pop-up. I intentionally focused on the unlock procedure first. For now, you can combine it with other apps like minimalistic launchers and apps that pop up after the app opens. But eventually, improving the reminder experience can make the solution more complete, I agree.
About typing "captcha" or random characters. I think it's just a different type of nudge. Another can be a small mini-game to play like catching a moving object. I'm going to consider adding different types of nudges to the app. Thanks for the suggestion.
I tried LeechBlock for a while and had that 64-char random string passphrase thing on. Turns out I became really quick at typing those 64 characters to get my dopamine fix.
Great app! Love the design and thoughts behind it. Few comments:
- isn't it possible to select multiple intentions? I've tried but when I turn on one, another one turns off.
- for apps like these I'm really missing a more expensive lifetime subscription. I'm okay with paying some more upfront if I don't have to pay a periodical fee.
> - isn't it possible to select multiple intentions? I've tried but when I turn on one, another one turns off.
Here is the place where I made a UX mistake. I implemented nudges in a similar way as "modes" on iOS or routines on Samsung phones. You can enable one at a time. If you want to customise the content you see, you have to customise it inside nudge, not by enabling another one. I didn't make any UX tests before releasing this and I see a lot of confusion here. Apologise for that.
> for apps like these I'm really missing a more expensive lifetime subscription. I'm okay with paying some more upfront if I don't have to pay a periodical fee.
That's another miscalculation I made :) But I already have plans to replace the subscription with one-time purchase. Again sorry for the inconvenience.
Installed about 30 minutes ago, it already made me reconsider using the phone 3x. It is indeed effective while you're engaging with it. Hope it continues like this for long term.
For the long term, I recommend changing the prompts from time to time and adjusting intensity and cooldown settings. Sometimes even turning it off, so you are not getting used to the screen.
I prefer this method too, as it helps me develop my self-control. (I have "τῶν ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν καὶ οὐκ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν", which is from Epictetus and means "things that are up to us and things that are not up to us" as a reminder that I can exert control over my phone use).
Physical barrier on the phone is probably the best way to tackle with such things, but that's not what always available or convenient.
I liked Opal, but with Intenty I tried to create an alternative way without blockers or limits. For some reason, app blockers and time limits are very frustrating for me and rarely work. That was one of the primary motivations for the app creation. While I admit that for the majority setting proper limits on certain apps will work.
Congrats on a useful and popular app! It sounds like something that could really help a lot of people.
Now, I really don't want to come across as smug or anything, but I'm not one of the people this would help. I already use my phone in a consciously controlled manner and I don't do things like endless doomscrolling. Despite, it's clear from the evidence that a lot of people do and would benefit from this app. So I'm really curious... what is that like? What goes through your head when you grab the phone, see the app, and then decide to put the phone back down? If you realize at that point that you don't actually want to use the phone right now, why did you grab it in the first place? I'm not insinuating anything, I'm genuinely just curious.
Usually it’s procrastination and anxiety escapism, and it’s all automatic. To know what goes through your head you have to reflect a lot and wouldn’t have the issue in the first place if you did that. Reflection is hard and its insights are very situational so I wouldn’t expect anyone to fully answer it.
In my case it depends on the nudge I'm currently set up.
If that's about using the phone less, like during focus time I pick it up habitually to procrastinate the screen can say "Just put it down and check it at the scheduled time". When I see the text I'm kind of dragged out of the habit loop and just putting it down or press the lock button. So it's a kind of replacement of one habit with another one. See an app screen? Lock the phone.
If it is about a weekend or a vacation I put a text on the screen about being more relaxed and not having FOMO. Like 'If that's something important, you will know about it'. Here the mechanism is almost the same, I'm replacing the habit of checking stuff with something different like music or locking my phone back again.
I am also not a doomscroller but a frequent "let's check if something new is happening" leads me to randomly picking up my phone regularly. It's almost automatic by now. Middle of work? "Muscle memory" sort of grabs phone, unlocks it, opens emails, messengers. Nothing new? Just close.
TL:DR;: For me (not a doomscroller) it's sort of automatic to check my mails and messages. Not thinking much while grabbing the phone
Now I realize that the decision to make nudges in the same way as modes on iOS was a bad decision. I made it intentionally, you select nudge as one mode to enable. If you want to customize the content, just change the prompts in the nudge. Apologies for the inconvenience.
And about lifetime subscription. I also get that. I will replace the subscription with a one-time purchase eventually.
Great app, but I second the lifetime price request. It's a bit weird for me to see a subscription for such an app. I'm happy to support the developer, but not on a monthly basis.
For me the only really useful intervention was getting a black and white e-ink Android smartphone. I started to read a book per month and my short video watching time was decimated.
I got the Bigme Hibreak which isn’t the worst, but lacks recent android versions. Gives me hours of my life back every day, compared to the phone addiction I experience with my lcd colour screen smartphone
I use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qqlabs.min... which has several things that pester you when opening certain applications. It also makes the home screen quite dull. Combine this with a monochrome display and the phone considerably loosens its grip on you.
> Have you tried RescueTime? It's a similar app that prompts you to log your activities every time you unlock your phone.
I didn't know they had such a feature. I'm going to check this out.
> It's surprising to see how much time can slip by unnoticed each day. Using it can really make you more mindful of how you're spending it.
Exactly. I have so many unnecessary phone pickups during the day. Without such apps that would slip unnoticed. Also, it's worth mentioning that when you notice those moments at least in my case it makes you feel guilty a bit that you picking it up unconsciously, but maybe that's my individual behaviour.
I feel like we're far too obsessed with the "nobility" of stuff we do for fun. Watch YouTube shorts, scroll reddit, whatever.
It's only "addictive" because it's fun, it's no more pointless than anything else you might do for fun. What are you really achieving by using this app? Do you have an unhealthy relationship with your phone, or are you just arbitrarily ranking it low on the "worthiness" of random shit you might choose to do to kill some time.
What I'm trying to achieve here is to make more conscious choices.
If I want to scroll Reddit, I would like to make a deliberate decision rather than doing it habitually in an "uncontrolled" way, just immediately out of boredom.
The app intervenes in this unconscious phone pickup habit loop and prompts me to reconsider this.
I'm not deleting social media apps from the device and I believe we shouldn't. I'm just trying to adjust the way how I reach them.
A lot of people doing the scrolling thing seem not satisfied with it. Listening to them, it seems they feel like it not only kills their time funnily, it actually goes beyond, and kills their time more they wanted will still not being so enjoyable.
So they are trying to find hacks to counter their habits.
I can relate. Sometimes I'm on HN a bit more longer than ideal. But that's not a big issue for me and it's not very often so I'm not finding a fix for this.
You might have a great relationship with time and your phone, which is great. Not all of us have that. If/when my mental health is not on its best legs tools like this might prevent it from going deeper. Its VERY easy for me to do 30 minutes of mindless youtube shorts watching instead of doing something I was supposed to do or even wanted to do.
ADHD brain is a bitch. "Gimmicks" help to trigger a intentional conscious response to break out of a pattern.
This is not true. Almost everything in mobile phones exploit human brain biases to keep us hooked. It's about regaining control of what you want to use your time for.
i don't have phone problems, but I do think there is a non-arbitrary worthiness scale to things I do for fun. In the long term, I think I benefit more and feel better about myself for spending time learning something or creating something than playing video games or doing something passive.
Even if the addition is really driven by the environment, rather than its subject itself, can individuals actually solve the underlying social problem? Can they do so in a way that's actually scalable to a significant portion of the population?
If your work, or lack of money, or your kids school, or your parents health are causing you stress, most often you can't simply "change your environment" to a less stressful one.
I swear comments on posts like this one always read like some religious support group for people that think sex outside of the context of marriage is worthy of shame. It's depressing.
The new religious nutjobbery is that sex between a man and a woman inside of the context of marriage is also worthy of shame because it's gay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRRPTfOB2U
One feature request: instead of giving me a freeform field to enter "why", give me a few of common uses cases as options like:
- Picking up the phone for real use (order, cab, call etc)
- For social connection
- For mindless scrolling
> One feature request: instead of giving me a freeform field to enter "why", give me a few of common uses cases as options like: - Picking up the phone for real use (order, cab, call etc) - For social connection - For mindless scrolling
You can add quick answers to the prompts, it's there, no need to type every time
> overtime you can plot why the phone was picked
Already you can export all historical data to CSV to analyze it. There is also an interesting thing to observe, it's time spent on the screen.
love the app, I think it works much better than a simple background with a question on it, and not only because I like to have pretty pictures there instead
an idea: it would be neat to have extra functionality with specific apps, with regular interruptions to ask if you're still on track or what have you. maybe not even a button press, just like a 5 second breather with a message on the screen and then it goes away. sort of like the notifications you currently have in place but for the whole screen. users could modify the message for each app...
More advanced reminders are the most frequent feature request so far. As a very trivial way to implement it, I'm thinking about showing the original screen periodically instead of the notification.
But the thing you suggest with modifying the message for each app sounds interesting. Are you thinking about something like "Have you found what you searched? Or you are just scrolling" on Reddit?
I haven't seen any of those apps (or built-in OS features like screen time on iOS) not become useless in a matter of days.
People that will use their phone for distraction (which I don't think there's actually anything wrong with) will take only a few days to get "notification fatigue" from those screens and automatically bypass them without even thinking about it.
I get that you can prevent bypassing the screen as you mentioned as an extra feature but people will just click the other button then.
There's not a single person (myself included) I have seen use screen time not automatically bypass the limitation instantly as it pops up.
What I'm trying to achieve here with the app is to give a set of tools that can help deal with this fatigue. Like adding a variety to the texts you see, changing the intensity of the pop-up screen, adding cooldown, or hard mode and schedules.
The Northstar is to adjust the nudge automatically based on the level of fatigue from the screen.
I know I'm far from it now. But I'm attempting. I'm changing the nudges often and their configuration manually for myself now. And it works for me and I believe it can help other folks as well.
> There's not a single person (myself included) I have seen use screen time not automatically bypass the limitation instantly as it pops up.
You can take the more drastic approach and lock yourself out of your phone by changing it's unlock code and use a timelock [0] to prevent yourself from bypassing it for a given time. Works also with parental-control like Apps that require you to enter a password/code to unlock. No bypassing here.
The point is that people don't stick with it. Bypassable versions works just as well as this, for a day or two until it becomes slightly annoying. Full lockout will work for a day or two as well, until it becomes annoying. The bypass here is simply that you never use it again.
On iOS it's simply impossible to implement. There is no way you can display an app over other apps after unlocking. I tried to implement something similar, like a widget, but that's a completely different app. Unfortunately, such an app is possible only on Android.
I just deleted an app a month until I was happy. My phone got so boring after a few months of this I started forgetting it when leaving home. Ended up using it so little on the go, wifi was enough and canceled my cell phone plan.
Been four years since I had cell service or regularly carried any internet capable devices and I have never been happier.
My anxiety has plummeted and my attention span and productivity have skyrocketed. I do not have a phone as a security blanket anymore and feel so much more confident in public.
Smartphones are optional for most people, but if you are forced to carry one, keep it in airplane mode whenever possible and only use it when solving the specific problem that forces you to carry it that you lack any alternatives for.
If you need mobile entertainment buy a paper book.
what do you do when you need a phone number?
Cool idea. Amazingly they've found a way to put "in-app purchases" though.
This app could just be an image set as your lock screen background.
I've found a good way to discourage mindless phone staring is to set the display to monochrome (e.g. through colorblind emulation). The decreased visual stimulation seems to have an effect on me, at least until I want to see a photo or video in colour and go back to normal.
Allow me to clarify about "in-app purchases".
The "in-app purchases" are for small complementary features, like making the screen appear on a schedule, making it impossible to skip the screen, and adding a lock button to lock the screen. Those features aren't essential for the app to function.
> This app could just be an image set as your lock screen background.
Well, yes and no. In the app, you can interact with the prompts. There is a history of your itneraction. You can export it and then analyze it if needed.
> I've found a good way to discourage mindless phone staring is to set the display to monochrome (e.g. through colorblind emulation). The decreased visual stimulation seems to have an effect on me, at least until I want to see a photo or video in colour and go back to normal.
+1 here. I have always had this setting on closer to bedtime.
The point I think was more a critique on the fact that everyone now tries to extract profit with everything, even the simplest of apps.
The point is, everyone believes all apps should be free when this developer spent time building, testing, and iterating to come out with quite the useful app. And the developer respects users, so they chose to monetize in a way that doesn’t collect our data or shove ads in our faces.
The first thing OP says is "Cool idea - don't deserve to get paid for it though".
why shouldn't they? they had to take the time to make the app and get it up on the App Store.
it's totally fair to charge for work you've done. the fact it's simple is irrelevant. what matters is the value it brings to the user.
It is totally fair to charge for work you've done - but then again, in my opinion, not everything needs to be built with some profit in mind (not talking about this app in particular now).
I think it's really refreshing to find an app that doesn't lock any features behind a paywall or makes using it more cumbersome unless you pay. I'm mostly okay with one-time payments though.
Just because you invested some time into making a project doesn't mean that you absolutely need to make some money to make it "worth" it. Hell, most open-source software is built on free/voluntary labor.
> not everything needs to be built with some profit in mind (not talking about this app in particular now).
I agree, and I make many projects for fun and find it rewarding when others use what I've built. But that is a decision that I make myself, for my own work. I never feel like I have the right to tell others whether they should build something with profit in mind or not.
I agree - it's definitely OP's decision and a valid one.
I understand the sentiment from a user's perspective, I really do.
I have been totally burned out by having to maintain all my free apps in the Play Store though, lately. Even a simple non-internet-using app needs an update every year and needs to comply with new bullshit policies every few months. It has totally changed my opinion on free vs paid apps. I still despise subscription models, but I absolutely understand that there's just no free apps out there anymore. It just costs too much of my time to keep doing it for free.
I've actually been talking about the developer's perspective as well - I have a couple of personal projects that I've invested quite a bit of time into but I still don't feel the need to try to find a way to monetize them.
I can definitely see your point though. Maybe an option would be open sourcing your app? (considering it's already free anyway) - that way you could maybe find some contributors to make it easier to keep up with everything.
Maybe the developer has bills to pay. Who are you to pontificate on whether they ought to be compensated or not?
Who are you to tell others what they are allowed to think and talk about?
Agree. I had a free app with 100000 downloads, no ads and 4.5 rating on Play store, it is no longer there because I got fed up with Google's nagging. If I will do free things going forward, I will do them outside closed ecosystems.
Also agree, and would also include paid apps as well!
I had a paid app which was a one time payment and was not doing anything special regarding permissions (no internet, nothing like that), but since it wasn't was bringing much revenue (some 3$-4$ per year), I let the Play Store remove it automatically. I couldn't justify adding the absurd data policies (since I wasn't using any user data) and the cost of updating it regularly.
Sorry for my 100 users, that cannot reinstall the app anymore!
> not everything needs to be built with some profit in mind
You didn't say this earlier. You said this app doesn't need to be developed with profit in mind.
I'm not the same user as the parent comment.
It's time and effort. If you're not willing to pay you're saying it has no value. I prefer a small upfront fee to seeing in app purchases though
That’s not true: not all value is monetary. The results of my hobby are distributed for free, but I gain value from the creation process for myself.
Critiquing the players and not the game misses the forest for the trees. This is the system we live in.
You're allowed to critique both. "The system" isn't handed down from god. It's just a set of choices made by people.
Yes, and one of those choices made by people is that if you don't make money, you deserve to starve.
How would you suggest to compensate devs for developing and maintaining such apps?
Personally I would much prefer that developers lock poweruser features behind a paywall rather than plaster ugly ads all over the place. Making it a paid app works too, but likely 95% of the potential userbase would not try the app if they had to reach for their wallets first.
UBI.
(I would leave the comment at that, but it would probably come across as a bit facetious and would fail any 'low-effort' test. But I genuinely mean it: remove the necessity to obtain a certain amount of money every month, and all of a sudden, people would be able to create, share, and enjoy for free.
> How would you suggest to compensate devs for developing and maintaining such apps?
As a developer, I feel more than sufficiently compensated by seeing people use and enjoy my work and thanking me. Getting featured on Hacker News would make my day; nay, year.
I just need to be able to eat and use a computer. I shouldn't have to prove myself valuable just to be allowed to live. I think everybody, regardless of what they do, deserve a livable basic income.
Great idea for a little app. <3
I don't see a problem with in-app purchases, but have you considered offering the unlocked app for free under Google Play Pass?
Thanks
Never used 'Google Play Pass' and haven't explored it from a dev perspective. If that's something like a toggle in Google Play Console then I see no problem enabling it.
Either way, it’s all about finding what clicks for you!
same thing worked for me. on iphone, ios 18 introduced a way to apply shades to everything, including app icon and notification counters. since i made the entire thing darker, i've stopped using instagram. i couldn't believe that such a small thing could do wonders. probably the same thing can be achieved by disabling the notification counter, but i think it's better to have it when you want to look for it, but make it not pop out into your eyes.
I do the same with iOS automations - disable monochrome (and orientation lock) for photos and camera apps, and enable it back once closed.
The benefit is that it re-enables monochrome mode after I might disable it manually.
> Amazingly they've found a way to put "in-app purchases" though.
I've been so happy slowly going through my phone and removing every single app on my phone that has either ads or in-app purchases. I don't miss a single one.
Hacker news has ads in the form of job positions. Do you also consider not using Hacker news anymore?
My sentence, in a very loose sense is an advertisement for my ideas. I think the concept can be stretched too far.
That's a pretty loose definition of an advertisement, particularly in the context of this conversation.
Not all ads are equal. I am willing to bet that every single app they were referring to had much more egregious advertising than HN does.
I do the same! It works pretty good for "visually addictive" apps... but not for HN for now
For that you set noproc in hn settings.
Ah, I was not aware of that! Thanks!
I have greyscale set to activate in the evening to wind down for bed.
Could you share how you achieved activating greyscale automatically? Was it Android or iOS?
I would love to be able to do this but couldn't find a way on GrapheneOS.
Latest Android has that built-in as a "Night Mode". You can also set a schedule or have it enable while charging
Best of all it saves battery
> This app could just be an image set as your lock screen background.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
I'd like to give it a try, but it is not compatible with my device. Is there a reason for it not to work on a Galaxy Note8?
Great! Apps like these are sorely needed. My feedback would be, apart from what others are saying about sub vs one-time purchase, to look at what Leechblock firefox extension is doing.
The key point is to make it harder (but not impossible) for me to use the phone. A "Do you need this?" is a great start, but since I can easily sneak by, I will soon do that. Even if I click "1 minute" to get a reminder, that should not be a simple notification, but back to the large big screen covering things.
What LB does is genius. You can enable a barrier so that if you reeeeeeally need to, you can get around, but it's annoying and time consuming, and thus the quick loop of "pick up phone and get stuck" is broken. The barrier in LB can be to type a (long) passphrase, or my favorite: a 64-char random string which cannot be copy-pasted. You need to manually look at 2-3 chars at a time and replicate the whole thing. Very effective.
But again, also the snap back to reality thing. If I keep using it, throw up a big overlay with a good question "Is your attention well spent?" for example. Make me wait before I can continue.
Advanced reminders are going to be a thing for the next big release. I agree that one problem is to pass the unlock, but staying on track with your intention is a different story. One periodical notification with static text can in theory fix that, but the chances are low in comparison to the full-screen pop-up. I intentionally focused on the unlock procedure first. For now, you can combine it with other apps like minimalistic launchers and apps that pop up after the app opens. But eventually, improving the reminder experience can make the solution more complete, I agree.
About typing "captcha" or random characters. I think it's just a different type of nudge. Another can be a small mini-game to play like catching a moving object. I'm going to consider adding different types of nudges to the app. Thanks for the suggestion.
I tried LeechBlock for a while and had that 64-char random string passphrase thing on. Turns out I became really quick at typing those 64 characters to get my dopamine fix.
The same thing will happen with this app. The user will select any answer to just do what they wanted to do.
Hahaha. Yeah. I started using a second browser...
Great app! Love the design and thoughts behind it. Few comments:
- isn't it possible to select multiple intentions? I've tried but when I turn on one, another one turns off. - for apps like these I'm really missing a more expensive lifetime subscription. I'm okay with paying some more upfront if I don't have to pay a periodical fee.
Anyway, really nice work!
Thanks for giving it a try!
> - isn't it possible to select multiple intentions? I've tried but when I turn on one, another one turns off.
Here is the place where I made a UX mistake. I implemented nudges in a similar way as "modes" on iOS or routines on Samsung phones. You can enable one at a time. If you want to customise the content you see, you have to customise it inside nudge, not by enabling another one. I didn't make any UX tests before releasing this and I see a lot of confusion here. Apologise for that.
> for apps like these I'm really missing a more expensive lifetime subscription. I'm okay with paying some more upfront if I don't have to pay a periodical fee.
That's another miscalculation I made :) But I already have plans to replace the subscription with one-time purchase. Again sorry for the inconvenience.
Again, thanks for a try
Installed about 30 minutes ago, it already made me reconsider using the phone 3x. It is indeed effective while you're engaging with it. Hope it continues like this for long term.
For the long term, I recommend changing the prompts from time to time and adjusting intensity and cooldown settings. Sometimes even turning it off, so you are not getting used to the screen.
It will not last much. The brain will figure out the reconsideration is wasted mental processing and just proceed to open phone by clicking tool.
My buddy has a wallpaper on his phone that says, in large letters, "Do I really to be picking up my phone right now?"
Done and done.
I prefer this method too, as it helps me develop my self-control. (I have "τῶν ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν καὶ οὐκ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν", which is from Epictetus and means "things that are up to us and things that are not up to us" as a reminder that I can exert control over my phone use).
I made one with large text ”Why?”
(edited)
He’d probably be on X "creating content"
Some people wrap their phone in an elastic band or there’s always Opal if you want more fine grained control: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/opal-screen-time-control/id149...
Physical barrier on the phone is probably the best way to tackle with such things, but that's not what always available or convenient.
I liked Opal, but with Intenty I tried to create an alternative way without blockers or limits. For some reason, app blockers and time limits are very frustrating for me and rarely work. That was one of the primary motivations for the app creation. While I admit that for the majority setting proper limits on certain apps will work.
Congrats on a useful and popular app! It sounds like something that could really help a lot of people.
Now, I really don't want to come across as smug or anything, but I'm not one of the people this would help. I already use my phone in a consciously controlled manner and I don't do things like endless doomscrolling. Despite, it's clear from the evidence that a lot of people do and would benefit from this app. So I'm really curious... what is that like? What goes through your head when you grab the phone, see the app, and then decide to put the phone back down? If you realize at that point that you don't actually want to use the phone right now, why did you grab it in the first place? I'm not insinuating anything, I'm genuinely just curious.
Usually it’s procrastination and anxiety escapism, and it’s all automatic. To know what goes through your head you have to reflect a lot and wouldn’t have the issue in the first place if you did that. Reflection is hard and its insights are very situational so I wouldn’t expect anyone to fully answer it.
In my case it depends on the nudge I'm currently set up.
If that's about using the phone less, like during focus time I pick it up habitually to procrastinate the screen can say "Just put it down and check it at the scheduled time". When I see the text I'm kind of dragged out of the habit loop and just putting it down or press the lock button. So it's a kind of replacement of one habit with another one. See an app screen? Lock the phone.
If it is about a weekend or a vacation I put a text on the screen about being more relaxed and not having FOMO. Like 'If that's something important, you will know about it'. Here the mechanism is almost the same, I'm replacing the habit of checking stuff with something different like music or locking my phone back again.
I don't think about it at all, it's almost automatic. Like locking the door when you leave your house.
I have a free moment, I enter a bus, I sit down at a table, boom phone.
I may be an usual case as I believe it to be caused by general anxiety and wanting to avoid the world.
I am also not a doomscroller but a frequent "let's check if something new is happening" leads me to randomly picking up my phone regularly. It's almost automatic by now. Middle of work? "Muscle memory" sort of grabs phone, unlocks it, opens emails, messengers. Nothing new? Just close.
TL:DR;: For me (not a doomscroller) it's sort of automatic to check my mails and messages. Not thinking much while grabbing the phone
Love it. I wish there was a way to select multiple nudges.
Is it possible to provide a lifetime subscription (instead of a monthly one) for premium features?
Thanks for the try.
Now I realize that the decision to make nudges in the same way as modes on iOS was a bad decision. I made it intentionally, you select nudge as one mode to enable. If you want to customize the content, just change the prompts in the nudge. Apologies for the inconvenience.
And about lifetime subscription. I also get that. I will replace the subscription with a one-time purchase eventually.
Great app, but I second the lifetime price request. It's a bit weird for me to see a subscription for such an app. I'm happy to support the developer, but not on a monthly basis.
I need this !
I can also recommend Stretchly for the computer https://github.com/hovancik/stretchly.
Forces me to stand up and look further / go grab some chicory.
Yes! I use this for both Win and Ubuntu. Works great.
For me the only really useful intervention was getting a black and white e-ink Android smartphone. I started to read a book per month and my short video watching time was decimated.
I got the Bigme Hibreak which isn’t the worst, but lacks recent android versions. Gives me hours of my life back every day, compared to the phone addiction I experience with my lcd colour screen smartphone
I use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qqlabs.min... which has several things that pester you when opening certain applications. It also makes the home screen quite dull. Combine this with a monochrome display and the phone considerably loosens its grip on you.
Have you tried RescueTime? It's a similar app that prompts you to log your activities every time you unlock your phone.
It's surprising to see how much time can slip by unnoticed each day. Using it can really make you more mindful of how you're spending it.
> Have you tried RescueTime? It's a similar app that prompts you to log your activities every time you unlock your phone.
I didn't know they had such a feature. I'm going to check this out.
> It's surprising to see how much time can slip by unnoticed each day. Using it can really make you more mindful of how you're spending it.
Exactly. I have so many unnecessary phone pickups during the day. Without such apps that would slip unnoticed. Also, it's worth mentioning that when you notice those moments at least in my case it makes you feel guilty a bit that you picking it up unconsciously, but maybe that's my individual behaviour.
I feel like we're far too obsessed with the "nobility" of stuff we do for fun. Watch YouTube shorts, scroll reddit, whatever.
It's only "addictive" because it's fun, it's no more pointless than anything else you might do for fun. What are you really achieving by using this app? Do you have an unhealthy relationship with your phone, or are you just arbitrarily ranking it low on the "worthiness" of random shit you might choose to do to kill some time.
What I'm trying to achieve here is to make more conscious choices.
If I want to scroll Reddit, I would like to make a deliberate decision rather than doing it habitually in an "uncontrolled" way, just immediately out of boredom.
The app intervenes in this unconscious phone pickup habit loop and prompts me to reconsider this.
I'm not deleting social media apps from the device and I believe we shouldn't. I'm just trying to adjust the way how I reach them.
I like the idea and I think it will be good in the short term but eventually your brain will just gloss over it I think.
A lot of people doing the scrolling thing seem not satisfied with it. Listening to them, it seems they feel like it not only kills their time funnily, it actually goes beyond, and kills their time more they wanted will still not being so enjoyable.
So they are trying to find hacks to counter their habits.
I can relate. Sometimes I'm on HN a bit more longer than ideal. But that's not a big issue for me and it's not very often so I'm not finding a fix for this.
You might have a great relationship with time and your phone, which is great. Not all of us have that. If/when my mental health is not on its best legs tools like this might prevent it from going deeper. Its VERY easy for me to do 30 minutes of mindless youtube shorts watching instead of doing something I was supposed to do or even wanted to do.
ADHD brain is a bitch. "Gimmicks" help to trigger a intentional conscious response to break out of a pattern.
> It's only "addictive" because it's fun
This is not true. Almost everything in mobile phones exploit human brain biases to keep us hooked. It's about regaining control of what you want to use your time for.
i don't have phone problems, but I do think there is a non-arbitrary worthiness scale to things I do for fun. In the long term, I think I benefit more and feel better about myself for spending time learning something or creating something than playing video games or doing something passive.
it's currently very cool to announce to everybody how little time you spend on your phone, it's like the new "I'm vegan" or "I use arch btw".
people don't realise how addiction works - see the Vietnam veterans case: https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits
we have bigger (social) problems that's causing the phone addiction: if it wasn't a phone, it would be video games, TV or alcohol or something else.
Even if the addition is really driven by the environment, rather than its subject itself, can individuals actually solve the underlying social problem? Can they do so in a way that's actually scalable to a significant portion of the population?
If your work, or lack of money, or your kids school, or your parents health are causing you stress, most often you can't simply "change your environment" to a less stressful one.
I swear comments on posts like this one always read like some religious support group for people that think sex outside of the context of marriage is worthy of shame. It's depressing.
The new religious nutjobbery is that sex between a man and a woman inside of the context of marriage is also worthy of shame because it's gay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRRPTfOB2U
I like the idea, congrats on the launch!
One feature request: instead of giving me a freeform field to enter "why", give me a few of common uses cases as options like: - Picking up the phone for real use (order, cab, call etc) - For social connection - For mindless scrolling
overtime you can plot why the phone was picked
Thanks!
> One feature request: instead of giving me a freeform field to enter "why", give me a few of common uses cases as options like: - Picking up the phone for real use (order, cab, call etc) - For social connection - For mindless scrolling
You can add quick answers to the prompts, it's there, no need to type every time
> overtime you can plot why the phone was picked
Already you can export all historical data to CSV to analyze it. There is also an interesting thing to observe, it's time spent on the screen.
love the app, I think it works much better than a simple background with a question on it, and not only because I like to have pretty pictures there instead
an idea: it would be neat to have extra functionality with specific apps, with regular interruptions to ask if you're still on track or what have you. maybe not even a button press, just like a 5 second breather with a message on the screen and then it goes away. sort of like the notifications you currently have in place but for the whole screen. users could modify the message for each app...
look forward to seeing further development!
More advanced reminders are the most frequent feature request so far. As a very trivial way to implement it, I'm thinking about showing the original screen periodically instead of the notification.
But the thing you suggest with modifying the message for each app sounds interesting. Are you thinking about something like "Have you found what you searched? Or you are just scrolling" on Reddit?
In any case, it's an item on the roadmap already
I have a foldable flip phone. It is equivalent : I need to go through some effort to open my phone. I don't open it unless I need to
I have been using Mindfull, and it's great. It can even block short form videos on different apps (Reddit, Instagram, Snap)
https://github.com/akaMrNagar/Mindful
but why?
Love the idea, is there an iOS version planned?
As soon as Apple allows listening to phone unlock events and displaying app over other apps. Currently there are not APIs on iOS for such thing
One should ask themselves just this whenever they are going to act or make a judgement.
Cal Newport would love this!
I haven't seen any of those apps (or built-in OS features like screen time on iOS) not become useless in a matter of days.
People that will use their phone for distraction (which I don't think there's actually anything wrong with) will take only a few days to get "notification fatigue" from those screens and automatically bypass them without even thinking about it.
I get that you can prevent bypassing the screen as you mentioned as an extra feature but people will just click the other button then.
There's not a single person (myself included) I have seen use screen time not automatically bypass the limitation instantly as it pops up.
Well, I agree.
The fatigue from the screen is real.
What I'm trying to achieve here with the app is to give a set of tools that can help deal with this fatigue. Like adding a variety to the texts you see, changing the intensity of the pop-up screen, adding cooldown, or hard mode and schedules.
The Northstar is to adjust the nudge automatically based on the level of fatigue from the screen.
I know I'm far from it now. But I'm attempting. I'm changing the nudges often and their configuration manually for myself now. And it works for me and I believe it can help other folks as well.
That's it.
> There's not a single person (myself included) I have seen use screen time not automatically bypass the limitation instantly as it pops up.
You can take the more drastic approach and lock yourself out of your phone by changing it's unlock code and use a timelock [0] to prevent yourself from bypassing it for a given time. Works also with parental-control like Apps that require you to enter a password/code to unlock. No bypassing here.
[0]: lockmeout.online
The point is that people don't stick with it. Bypassable versions works just as well as this, for a day or two until it becomes slightly annoying. Full lockout will work for a day or two as well, until it becomes annoying. The bypass here is simply that you never use it again.
Nothing for iOS?
On iOS it's simply impossible to implement. There is no way you can display an app over other apps after unlocking. I tried to implement something similar, like a widget, but that's a completely different app. Unfortunately, such an app is possible only on Android.
i scroll through reddit when im on the toilet or waiting etc. while cooking or something
that's really it.
brilliant