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.
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.
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.
As much as I'm dependent on many open source projects (shout-out to Home Assistant, Immich and more), I've been burned by open sourcing my apps in the past too often to consider this for serious projects.
Regardless of what license you use, people will find a way to abuse your stuff. One of the two apps I open sourced we're published on the play store with tons of ads, in many different flavours. The other was used as a base to scam people.
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.
Interesting point. I think that the availability of good free apps on Play Store has a positive effect on the market for Android phones in general. I know it factors into people's decision of phone religion that apps are more likely to charge on Apple's store (even sometimes for an app which is free on Android).
All that said, F-droid is the only one I'll ever love.
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 (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.
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.
> 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.
(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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I think by this point in time, most people who are taking an active effort to remove advertising from their lives are well aware that the concern with "ads" isn't primarily about the requirement to see ads - it's the privacy-consuming infrastructure behind them.
Not to mention the attention-stealing flashing lights and popping up over the thing you want to see and all the other ways to make you think about something against your will.
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.
It's a Samsung, Android phone. I used "Modes and Routines" which allows to set greyscale (and silent mode etc.) and automate triggers (such as time of day) to activate a "mode".
you can find a balance here by setting on bedtime mode in Android where after sunset, your screen glows black and white and they added the ability to pause for 30 minutes.
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.
Opal's ads were very good actually. I got targeted ones on Instagram Reels and they legitimately made me uninstall everything that wasn't serving me. Ironically I never installed Opal, but their marketing team really did me a solid.
> 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.
Does it do this on iOS? I just cancelled RT because it crashed on my work computer all the time but if the phone app weren’t useless that might be different.
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.
No problem! To be fair, turning multiple on at the same time would be a great (premium) feature, for people who want to work on multiple things like me :)
What's with that idea that compulsions aren't real? They are just as real and difficult to drop as substance-based addictions, for a rather simple reason:
The physical addiction is only a compounding factor, not the core difficulty in a "classic" addiction.
What really makes people always come back, no matter what, is the psychological addiction, not the physical one. Which is also why phones can be just as difficult to stop as gambling compulsions or drug addictions.
This is an extremist position and disagrees with a century of science on the topic. That simplistic "weak-minded" indicates that you are just looking for a chance to make yourself feel/look better than others and are unable to get positive stimuli on your own positive merits.
Additionally, you seem to need this illusion of control, that you and your "strong mind" are actually in charge, which current research heavily disagrees with. If you want to put that to the test, I've got a few ideas for you...
Humans are not as simple as you seem to think. If only it were that easy.
I'd argue, actual adults are primarily able to discuss a topic without shitting on those they perceive as "weak".
Greetings from somebody who used to work on the treatment side of things.
> unable to get positive stimuli on your own positive merits
Ahh, the typical reaction, lashing out, and ad-hominem. I am sooo unsurprised.
I am well aware that everyone has their breaking point. What is easy for one individual is hard for another. No worries. However, I never expected phone compulsion to make someone fail the Gom Jabbar test. I mean, seriously? If you have trouble regulating your tool usage, how do you even get through life!
I was just thinking about Cal too. I listened[1] to Deep Work and Digital Minimalism a couple years ago and still use many of his prescriptions. Namely, I have no social media or gaming apps installed on my phone. On my home screen for quick access I only have Google Voice, Messenger, Maps, and the camera app. The browser app (Firefox with uBlock Origin extension) is buried and it deletes everything when I close it, so there's no history, bookmarks, logins, etc. to make browsing more streamlined. I often leave the phone at home or in my car when I go out. I leave it by the front door when I'm at home instead of keeping it in my hand or pocket.
I find that having a very light data plan helps too (in addition to saving money). I have the $5/month annual plan from Red Pocket that gives me 500 MB. I'm well aware that I could burn through 500 MB very quickly, so that makes me think twice about whether I really need to load a web page if I'm out somewhere without Wi-Fi.
[1] Audiobooks on my phone, ironically. But making audiobooks more accessible is probably the best value that smartphones have provided for me. Libby, for borrowing audiobooks from the library and listening to them, is the one entertainment app that I have installed.
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.
I think that's extremely dangerous and I would never consider this to be honest. My phone is my only phone, and I need to be able to call emergency services, or answer an important call, at unexpected times.
If I reached the point where I was comfortable literally being unable to use my phone for a period of time, I would just not have a phone or not carry it with me.
> 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.
This isn't consistent with the data. I'm a cofounder of Clearspace and we see that when people make it through the first two weeks, they stick around for months or years.
YMMV - because our feature set looks slightly different - half users are in a mode where you have to do pushups to unlock distracting apps which really does tend to stick for people that opt in. (like this https://x.com/_oliver_hill/status/1825605422885253445)
> This isn't consistent with the data. I'm a cofounder of Clearspace and we see that when people make it through the first two weeks, they stick around for months or years.
And how many make it through the first two weeks? I'll take a guess and say less than 1%.
I can relate to this. I conducted UX experiment during my Master's in Human Computer Interaction which was testing an impact of various interventions to screen time and user perception. I observed very similar pattern, if it clicks it stays with the people. Of course the experiment was with small group, but still.
A good comparison I think are "self help" books. People are still reading them and those books are really helpful during certain times. While same ideas and concepts are circulating across those books.
I believe such kind of apps and software deserve to exist. Whatever helps people to make their lives better.
Right. Because these things require some thought and analysis if you truly think that you yourself are having issues with screen time or other attention-related issues.
I may or may not have that right now but I for sure did some years ago. And if you are having issues with your attention? Boy, loading on more stuff that you are supposed to “attend to” for sure does not help. Someone who is having self-reported issues with their attention is not going to see some automated mindfulness message and go, oh wait time to slow down and take a good gander at what I want to spend my attention on right now.
On the contrary that will just tire them more. Which makes them more susceptible to losing their awareness or attention.
But people who think there is one-weird-trick to fixing these issues are incapable of understanding the +1 attention problem: that loading more stuff onto the person is not going to help.
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 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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These critiques/nudges/reminders about screen time are as much worth as a YouTube short: a dime a dozen. Completely shallow, thoughtless, vapid and a waste of time.[1] Anyone can make the point that people are staring at their phones. That they spend time on social media.
It’s the equivalent of getting up on a soapbox and exclaiming that we live in a society. (Except everyone is on their phone and won’t give you any attention)
Why? Why are you on your phone? Well, have you, the critiquer of the supposed malaise given any real thought to that? Or do you have no insights to offer, nothing more than a rhetorical one-word question to ask, nothing that penetrates the surface of the supposed problem?
Have you, OP?
At least propose a theory. Like: maybe people are overstimulated and have choice fatigue. Then what the hell does yet another automated nagger help? One more reminder that you should drink a cup of coffeine-free green tea and smile at a stranger?
Nothing was uncovered. Nothing was gained.
[1] This is not true. Making YouTube shorts takes some editing skills.
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).
BTW, it was quite complicated but I added support for flip phones as well. So the app works correctly on flip phones as well. Flip phone users might have an ultimate setup.
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.
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.
Subscription software cost can be modeled as a one-time fee: you calculate the net present value of all the payments.
For example, if you plan to use this app for 7 years (which is a reasonable expectation for a piece of software's lifetime) and it costs $2 a month, the net present value is somewhere around $138. That is, if you decide right now to use the app for 7 years, you are costing yourself $138 in today-dollars.
Which is rather a lot.
Of course the subscription does have the benefit that you can cut off your usage at any point, however the people asking for a perpetual irrevocable license are probably not the type who appreciate this capability.
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 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.
I think it will work just fine in combination with Intenty. Of course, it might be too challenging to use the device with so many obstacles. But if that helps to be more mindful about phone usage, why not?
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.
The original app was released ~ 4 years ago, but it survived several rounds of overhauls from scratch while keeping the original idea - "showing nudges after phone unlock". It can be considered a launch because it's almost a remade app.
Check out ScreenZen, it doesn’t work with general unlocks but you can set it to add similar mindfulness reminders for specific apps or categories of apps. Been using it a few weeks and a fan.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because I am not always driven to type 128 random characters or even use my phone camera, so it does successfully stop me from procrastinating much of the time.
> It's too easy to defeat the purpose of these things if you're even slightly driven.
Things like the OP and LeechBlock are tools for people who have already mostly conquered their addiction, to help keep them from relapsing. On their own, they're not sufficient to turn an addict into a non-addict.
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.
Just thinking about this, there might be room for a home launcher that helps manage attention this way. Probably more work than you are thinking of doing though.
One thing to consider, maybe open the app up for interaction with Tasker (being able to send events and provide actions to execute) - this will allow people to implement advanced logic on their own. If you expose user answering or skipping the screen as event, and ability to bring the screen back up as action, users[0] would be able to easily add features like "bring up Intenty screen when user attempts to open specific app or apps during work hours", or "make skipping require solving an ordinary differential equation shown rot13-encoded, and write down the answer in Klingon", or whatnot. That could be a good testbed for ideas to later incorporate into the app itself.
--
[0] - Those that also use Tasker. I'd wager that for your target audience, the proportion of such users is much higher than in average case.
> The key point is to make it harder (but not impossible) for me to use the phone.
All apps, and actually the phone manfacturers themselves make phones harder to use through user hostile patterns. Mandatory updates, re-logon, TOC confirmations, cookies, self promotions in the face, adverts, warnings, spray of notifications on marginal things, answering questions to important (or not) questions, selecting important (or not) huge amount of settings, suggestions (actually another self promotion mostly), update informations, etc. all make the phones as difficult to use as much those helps, or even more. For insane amount of money. Problem relocation machines they are.
And the fee gets deposited into a high-yield savings account of your choice, so you're paying yourself (it reminds me of those sites that allow you to make a "bet" to your friends that you'll (stop smoking/exercise more/lose weight/whatever) and if you don't do it then you have to pay your friends
To help those that need a tool to stop them from themselves. Sometimes, the creature part of us gets a hold over oneself, for me especially when I'm tired. In those cases, however much I want to and know I should, it's just so hard to stop the impulse. And when that happens, apps and services such as Youtube/Tiktok/IG etc etc are honed in to take advantage and not let go. It's probably very closely related to addiction (substance/sex/gambling/etc) in how it works.
If you have not experienced this, and don't see the need per the above, I'm happy for you.
397 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] threadThis 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Regardless of what license you use, people will find a way to abuse your stuff. One of the two apps I open sourced we're published on the play store with tons of ads, in many different flavours. The other was used as a base to scam people.
All that said, F-droid is the only one I'll ever love.
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!
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.
You didn't say this earlier. You said this app doesn't need to be developed with profit in mind.
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.
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.
(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.
I don't see a problem with in-app purchases, but have you considered offering the unlocked app for free under Google Play Pass?
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.
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.
I think by this point in time, most people who are taking an active effort to remove advertising from their lives are well aware that the concern with "ads" isn't primarily about the requirement to see ads - it's the privacy-consuming infrastructure behind them.
I would love to be able to do this but couldn't find a way on GrapheneOS.
The benefit is that it re-enables monochrome mode after I might disable it manually.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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!
> - 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
https://github.com/akaMrNagar/Mindful
What really makes people always come back, no matter what, is the psychological addiction, not the physical one. Which is also why phones can be just as difficult to stop as gambling compulsions or drug addictions.
Can you also do something against gambling? Would be cool.
Additionally, you seem to need this illusion of control, that you and your "strong mind" are actually in charge, which current research heavily disagrees with. If you want to put that to the test, I've got a few ideas for you...
Humans are not as simple as you seem to think. If only it were that easy. I'd argue, actual adults are primarily able to discuss a topic without shitting on those they perceive as "weak".
Greetings from somebody who used to work on the treatment side of things.
Ahh, the typical reaction, lashing out, and ad-hominem. I am sooo unsurprised.
I am well aware that everyone has their breaking point. What is easy for one individual is hard for another. No worries. However, I never expected phone compulsion to make someone fail the Gom Jabbar test. I mean, seriously? If you have trouble regulating your tool usage, how do you even get through life!
I literally lol’d. This is the kind of nonsense that dribbled down my chin when I was like 13 and thought I had the whole world figured out.
Yes! Outcast the people who have an addiction. I'm sure that will help get them back on track! Have you ever thought about writing a book?
I find that having a very light data plan helps too (in addition to saving money). I have the $5/month annual plan from Red Pocket that gives me 500 MB. I'm well aware that I could burn through 500 MB very quickly, so that makes me think twice about whether I really need to load a web page if I'm out somewhere without Wi-Fi.
[1] Audiobooks on my phone, ironically. But making audiobooks more accessible is probably the best value that smartphones have provided for me. Libby, for borrowing audiobooks from the library and listening to them, is the one entertainment app that I have installed.
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.
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.
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
If I reached the point where I was comfortable literally being unable to use my phone for a period of time, I would just not have a phone or not carry it with me.
This isn't consistent with the data. I'm a cofounder of Clearspace and we see that when people make it through the first two weeks, they stick around for months or years.
YMMV - because our feature set looks slightly different - half users are in a mode where you have to do pushups to unlock distracting apps which really does tend to stick for people that opt in. (like this https://x.com/_oliver_hill/status/1825605422885253445)
And how many make it through the first two weeks? I'll take a guess and say less than 1%.
A good comparison I think are "self help" books. People are still reading them and those books are really helpful during certain times. While same ideas and concepts are circulating across those books.
I believe such kind of apps and software deserve to exist. Whatever helps people to make their lives better.
I may or may not have that right now but I for sure did some years ago. And if you are having issues with your attention? Boy, loading on more stuff that you are supposed to “attend to” for sure does not help. Someone who is having self-reported issues with their attention is not going to see some automated mindfulness message and go, oh wait time to slow down and take a good gander at what I want to spend my attention on right now.
On the contrary that will just tire them more. Which makes them more susceptible to losing their awareness or attention.
But people who think there is one-weird-trick to fixing these issues are incapable of understanding the +1 attention problem: that loading more stuff onto the person is not going to help.
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
https://www.thelightphone.com.
Also I wonder if my app is working nicely on an e-ink smartphone, very interesting.
All of that would perfectly work on e-ink. Instead I got a Pixel and after four years I have attention span of a squirrel.
Really have to do something about it, will try grayscale for now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ADHD brain is a bitch. "Gimmicks" help to trigger a intentional conscious response to break out of a pattern.
Basically anything I in-fact do when my phone's not around, is better than the phone.
The only thing I do without the phone that's almost as low-value is video gaming (gee, more electronics...)
It’s the equivalent of getting up on a soapbox and exclaiming that we live in a society. (Except everyone is on their phone and won’t give you any attention)
Why? Why are you on your phone? Well, have you, the critiquer of the supposed malaise given any real thought to that? Or do you have no insights to offer, nothing more than a rhetorical one-word question to ask, nothing that penetrates the surface of the supposed problem?
Have you, OP?
At least propose a theory. Like: maybe people are overstimulated and have choice fatigue. Then what the hell does yet another automated nagger help? One more reminder that you should drink a cup of coffeine-free green tea and smile at a stranger?
Nothing was uncovered. Nothing was gained.
[1] This is not true. Making YouTube shorts takes some editing skills.
And you know, you could mindlessly watch cable tv :)
Done and done.
that's really it.
Is it possible to provide a lifetime subscription (instead of a monthly one) for premium features?
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.
For example, if you plan to use this app for 7 years (which is a reasonable expectation for a piece of software's lifetime) and it costs $2 a month, the net present value is somewhere around $138. That is, if you decide right now to use the app for 7 years, you are costing yourself $138 in today-dollars.
Which is rather a lot.
Of course the subscription does have the benefit that you can cut off your usage at any point, however the people asking for a perpetual irrevocable license are probably not the type who appreciate this capability.
On Android, you can even combine Intenty and one-sec.
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
> 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.
it's pretty easy to work around but all I generally need is something to knock me out of my flow.
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!
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
My hack was to take a picture on my phone, have Apple's image recognition copy the string to my iCloud clipboard, and I'd paste it on my mac.
It's too easy to defeat the purpose of these things if you're even slightly driven.
Maybe the goal was to motivate you to find a hack anyway :)
Things like the OP and LeechBlock are tools for people who have already mostly conquered their addiction, to help keep them from relapsing. On their own, they're not sufficient to turn an addict into a non-addict.
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.
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[0] - Those that also use Tasker. I'd wager that for your target audience, the proportion of such users is much higher than in average case.
All apps, and actually the phone manfacturers themselves make phones harder to use through user hostile patterns. Mandatory updates, re-logon, TOC confirmations, cookies, self promotions in the face, adverts, warnings, spray of notifications on marginal things, answering questions to important (or not) questions, selecting important (or not) huge amount of settings, suggestions (actually another self promotion mostly), update informations, etc. all make the phones as difficult to use as much those helps, or even more. For insane amount of money. Problem relocation machines they are.
Why exactly?
If you have not experienced this, and don't see the need per the above, I'm happy for you.