I installed this in the morning to give it a test drive, and after several hours, I learned the following: it's great when I reach for the phone as a distraction; it's a big annoyance otherwise.
E.g. each time I want to change the currently playing song, what was muscle memory gets scrambled by the interruption. Or, when I'm taking a lot of photos (like on my daughter's kindergarten event today), I tend to keep the screen off in between, and rely on being able to turn it on and shoot a photo in less than two seconds, total. Guess how that got screwed up by this app.
The app itself is great, and I'm still a believer in the concept of managing executive function issues by throwing obstacles in front of bad habits and known focus black holes. However, this experience made me discover the third class of phone activity, next to "distraction" and "work" - quick, intermittent, on-the-fly use, the kind you ideally don't think much about. This class does not distract you... unless someone adds friction to it.
I just saw the app has "every N unlocks" option, I'll try it out and see if this helps with the "third class".
I already have an app that does this on Android (One Sec is the app) and it only inserts a "mindfulness break" for specific apps (e.g. Chrome and social media), and I came to the same conclusion you did.
It's grind when I just mindlessly tap to open the browser to search for something random. Lots of times, though, the browser opens when I want to do something quickly, e.g. I get an email and I need to open something in the browser, and it becomes a big annoyance. After a while I just started subconsciously ignoring it, which I think defeats the purpose.
It's a tough problem to solve - I want it to prevent me from doing "mindless scrolling", but not when I have an actual task to accomplish.
Having work and leisure mixed on a device or service is a pain.
I had tried to block Reddit but then I needed it when researching some programming stuff. Most conversations happen on Reddit these days so if you need to look something up for work to see what others are doing, chances are Google will give you Reddit links first especially if what you are searching for is relatively recent.
What I found is that I developed a muscle memory for just ignoring the block and overriding it.
Instead of allowing myself an override that so I could dismiss the block I had to just hard block all of Reddit by setting an PIN I immediately forgot and if I really need something I’ll use ChatGPT to summarize.
One Sec is a good balance of running interference while not making the device unusable. I installed it at your suggestion and appreciate the brief pause before opening Firefox now. I have to respect the developer's privacy commitment, too. I hesitate to give prying eyes access to my app usage and was glad to see One Sec wasn't going to sell my data to someone who will further seek to command my attention.
I'm thinking also about adding an option to have like 50% chance of a popup or a 75% chance, so it's less predictable. I first made it as every 2nd, 3d and so on, but maybe adding a randomness to it will be better? WDYT?
For my use case, randomness would make it even worse. For muscle memory, consistency is key. I don't know what the solution is - ideally, the app would not interrupt such quick actions like unlocking to take a photo or switch the song, but in practice, it can't exactly guess what I'm going to do before I do it. I was thinking about maybe "unlock and don't show the popup for the next 5 minutes", but then I already know that one of these days, I'll activate it for "one quick check of Instagram" (or HN), defeating the purpose of the application.
Sorry I can't be more helpful. I've been mulling this problem (selective blocking in dual-purpose apps/sites) in my mind for a long time now, but I haven't found any solution so far.
I use Android's Bedtime mode a lot, and it has a helpful feature that let's you quickly "Pause for 30 minutes" or "Turn off for now" from a notification [1].
I don't think the app needs notifications as such, but it could have quick access to a pause button.
I have my own thought and also one in response to the "taking a photo" type tasks.
I'd like a drop down of some tasks I predefined, so I can answer with one of those.
Things like "answering a message" that I can choose instead of entering one. There is occasionally one message with 3 choices, I think, about how this aligns with my goals. So something like that but user defined.
Second thing, maybe a couple of those options could be tied to app launch so clicking it takes you to the common task. For example, "Taking a photo" could drop me right back into the camera app.
Great app, I've been using it all day and just doing so is insightful. And glad this comment chain led me to the "cooldown" function.
Can you track how long since the last unlock? I think adding a TTL of say 5 minutes to not be asked again after answering would probably eliminate the majority of annoyances.
I wonder if being location based would be helpful? I'm not actually a heavy phone user, but I would guess that people are mainly using it as a distraction when they're at home or work, and less likely if they're out and about? (Though honestly, for me, the main thing I use my phone for at home / work is two-factor-authentication, and there it'd probably be annoying.)
I would have it set so you can either blacklist or whitelist wifi connections. EG if I'm at home, I might want to make it enable but otherwise let me use my phone. Or maybe have work WiFi blacklisted so it happens everywhere except when I'm at work.
Maybe the app should kick in only if you start using one of the "bad" apps, like a browser or a social network app? Being in the way when I want to snap a quick photo doesn't sound nice.
What I did (helped me eventually delete them) was offload the "bad" apps on my phone so, if I wanted to access them, I'd have to wait for them to re-download. This is an iOS feature where the pointer to the app and the local data remains, but the app bundle itself is deleted. I think it's primary use case is to manage scarce disk space.
It forced me to reckon with the fact that tapping on these apps is often a system 1 instinct. The forced delay to reinstall the app is an escape hatch into system 2 thinking, a mode in which I normally realize I don't even want to use the app, I'm just bored. And then I'd pick up a book or use my newspaper-reader-app (i.e. a more intent/system 2-driven choice).
Off-loading apps or even just removing them from the home screen is really helpful. It gives your system 2 brain an opportunity to mutate your environment to make system 1 processes lead to more fruitful outcomes.
For the same reason, I clear my browser history every month or so and avoid bookmarking certain sites like hn or reddit.
I use iOS's built in Screen Time settings. For "bad" apps (Reddit, TikTok, etc) and "bad" websites ("hackernews", etc) I set a daily time limit of, let's say, 15 minutes.
I configure a random password for Screen Time so that it's a real hassle to circumvent the daily limit when I get over it.
Better solution: add in increasing delay before opening a time waster, increasing 1 second between each open over the course of the day. Openning Reddit for the 15th time today? 15 second wait (or longer).
This is solved by having dedicated devices for camera and music player! (At least for these two examples, which are also my top non-distraction / non-social phone usage.)
I don't have those yet but I wish I did! I was just thinking back to how cool the iPod was back in the day. (The one before touchscreens!)
(I was also thinking how cool it would be if it had the iPod's UI but Rockbox's (and every other mp3 player in human history) support for just putting folders full of files on it... but I guess I'll keep dreaming!)
I actually went full old-school and got an portable cd-player.
This has the side effect of me listening to music more intentionally and not wasting time selecting tracks and skipping around. Listening to a full album is great, something I rarely did before. And physically owning music feels great.
Sure, it is less practical for traveling but it mostly sits on my desk to help me get through work. And CD's having a fixed run length helps me to take breaks so my tinnitus does not get worse.
That is a solution, but not an ideal one for many (most?). One of the great innovations of the smartphone is that I have all 3 devices in one small form factor, so I don't need to carry/travel with the bulk of many.
That's fair. I miss MP3 players and even feature phones - all of them could be operated without looking at them!
Alas, ever since Apple showed it's Courage™ by ditching the audio jack, Bluetooth headphones became ubiquitous (doubly so thanks to AirPods and alternatives). They're nice and all, but they also have mikes, so you want to use them for calling and voice messaging too, and then you can also put notifications on them, ... with Bluetooth device switching being what it is, this complements and reinforces smartphone's role as single device for everything.
EDIT: I wonder if it's possible to have some kind of mixer wearable that would accept wireless audio streams (both in "music" and "headset" modes) from multiple devices, mix them together, and route to a single set of wireless headphones. That would solve a lot of the issues I have with wireless audio in practice.
Re: The photos case: I have the camera app bound to a double click of my power button. I find it to be incredibly useful to have a way to immediately open my camera and Intenty doesn't override that flow.
Hah, I used to do that too, however I changed it so double-press of the side button toggles the flashlight instead. I find this to have much better ROI.
For camera, turning the screen off while camera app is open means I can just press the power button and slide up, and I'm back in camera app (unless Intenty interferes).
For flashlight, having a quick key (that works even when the phone is locked) is a qualitative change - I use the phone flashlight much more often, now that I can casually turn it on and off with zero effort, like a traditional torch. There are actually two major use cases I have for that daily:
- In autumn/winter, by the time I pick my kids up from the kindergarten, it's already dark. There's a stretch of pavement that's pitch dark, so I just casually light it up as we walk over it.
(That was the driver behind me changing the button mapping from camera to flashlight; having done that, I now instinctively turn the flashlight on and off as I walk, lighting up dark spots.)
- Have you ever tried to read something from a phone while walking at night? It's a big problem - the screen pretty much blinds you, unless you turn the brightness down to minimum. You can't read and monitor ground under your feet at the same time. However, if you also turn on the flashlight, the brightness of the screen and the light reflecting off the ground are similar, so reading becomes comfortable and you regain awareness of terrain.
I figured out that trick long ago, first with Kindle (Paperwhite) - I'd put my phone against the back of the Kindle, turn the backlight on the reader, and the flashlight on the phone. But it works even better for reading from the phone itself.
This is where an OS-based agent would help. If it semantically understood the tasks we're trying to accomplish, it could filter the cases we care about.
I'm even more excited about browser or OS agents being able to unilaterally scrub the web of all advertisements, spam, polarized toxicity, etc. Forget adblock - I can effectively block all the bad things Google, Meta, Twitter, etc. do and their army of PMs won't be able to stop me.
This tech is going to rip the advertiser and algorithmic madness out of the internet and make it serve me and only me.
>I installed this in the morning to give it a test drive, and after several hours, I learned the following: it's great when I reach for the phone as a distraction; it's a big annoyance otherwise.
I have thought of a workaround. Instead of an app that asks "Why?", a sticker on your phone that asks "Why?" Or maybe just a question mark. I will order one for my phone.
it's a hard problem. I often open the phone to do something legit but then get distracted by a notificiation or unread count.
maybe a better solution would be "why?" when you switch or launch apps. Then being able to select apps that don't cause the prompt like camera and bank apps
This is my problem in a work context. I know I'm distractable, yet for security reasons I have to have a distraction device which I have to pick up and use for signing into certain applications.
Last year I laser-cut a replica of my phone out of wood. I looked at it, said the words "this is my phone", and put it in my pocket, where I normally carried my phone. You wouldn't believe how many times I mindlessly pulled out this piece of wood from my pocket, intending to check messages, or whatever. When I placed it on the table while having dinner with a friend, my inner eye was looking at it, thinking maybe there is a new message. It was absolutely absurd and scary. You can try this out yourself.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
I had an employer want that too, but we protested. Basically making that the case that they'd need to provide us with phones so that we don't have to install invasive apps on our personal devices. We ended up getting tiny hardware tokens that go on a key ring and couldn't access GPS, cameras, microphones, sensor data, network, etc even if it wanted to.
This has always boggled my mind - If you don't trust me to pick a decent password and maintain my own machine, why in God's name would you trust me to write code or deploy/maintain company infrastructure?
MFA isn't solely about "the user had poor security posture and can't be trusted". It's about what happens even if the user's info is leaked by a information breach of a service. I.e. "having the login info for the service isn't enough, the user must be notified and approve of the login via a separate factor".
That's why MFA is referred to as defense-in-depth rather than being a better password.
1. Even if they trust you, they might not be willing to extend that trust to non-technical staff (or even non-infra staff) and having a global policy is the easiest.
2. Even if they trust you, your employer's customers definitely don't, and a lot of big contracts will have security exhibits that explicitly require MFA if you're handling their data.
They _don't_ trust you to do that stuff. Not unilaterally at least. In a healthy system you generally aren't able to change anything without sign off from multiple other people.
But that's ok your work phone right? At least I hope you didn't agree to have it installed on your private phone. For work phone I guess a good strategy is to avoid installing anything non-work related, so the temptation to use it for anything is low.
If it's plain OTP this works fine. Plenty of corporate solutions like Microsoft's have moved on to requiring additional extensions or modifications which only work in their app.
Love it! Reminds me of an app my brother and I built 10 years ago (time flies!). It's no longer on Google Play because of the maintenance burden of keeping it there, but here's a page with some screenshots: https://apkpure.com/spinach-motivation-lock-screen/com.tengu...
The idea was that if you're unlocking your screen, you should at least: (1) reinforce a mantra, or (2) force yourself to acknowledge you shouldn't be unlocking the phone.
Happy to share notes if you think that would be helpful.
Up to you, but if the app has (or could have) an OSI license, you could submit a PR to f-droid and the app could live on. They don't care if you ask for donations, so it could even resurrect a bit of revenue
I even remember in 2019 finding an app that was using a popup after unlock to learn words of a foreign language, unfortunately, it closed and I cannot recall the name.
I think it could potentially be us too, though not sure. It was a very flexible product and we had a variety of use-cases. :)
We also had a lock screen app that you needed to play a tune on an instrument in order to unlock the screen. This too died because of Google maintenance burden (it had 500k downloads IIRC). Here's what I could find about that one: https://music-lock.en.softonic.com/android
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 :)
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.
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.
Readit News
E.g. each time I want to change the currently playing song, what was muscle memory gets scrambled by the interruption. Or, when I'm taking a lot of photos (like on my daughter's kindergarten event today), I tend to keep the screen off in between, and rely on being able to turn it on and shoot a photo in less than two seconds, total. Guess how that got screwed up by this app.
The app itself is great, and I'm still a believer in the concept of managing executive function issues by throwing obstacles in front of bad habits and known focus black holes. However, this experience made me discover the third class of phone activity, next to "distraction" and "work" - quick, intermittent, on-the-fly use, the kind you ideally don't think much about. This class does not distract you... unless someone adds friction to it.
I just saw the app has "every N unlocks" option, I'll try it out and see if this helps with the "third class".
It's grind when I just mindlessly tap to open the browser to search for something random. Lots of times, though, the browser opens when I want to do something quickly, e.g. I get an email and I need to open something in the browser, and it becomes a big annoyance. After a while I just started subconsciously ignoring it, which I think defeats the purpose.
It's a tough problem to solve - I want it to prevent me from doing "mindless scrolling", but not when I have an actual task to accomplish.
I had tried to block Reddit but then I needed it when researching some programming stuff. Most conversations happen on Reddit these days so if you need to look something up for work to see what others are doing, chances are Google will give you Reddit links first especially if what you are searching for is relatively recent.
What I found is that I developed a muscle memory for just ignoring the block and overriding it.
Instead of allowing myself an override that so I could dismiss the block I had to just hard block all of Reddit by setting an PIN I immediately forgot and if I really need something I’ll use ChatGPT to summarize.
Dead Comment
I'm thinking also about adding an option to have like 50% chance of a popup or a 75% chance, so it's less predictable. I first made it as every 2nd, 3d and so on, but maybe adding a randomness to it will be better? WDYT?
Sorry I can't be more helpful. I've been mulling this problem (selective blocking in dual-purpose apps/sites) in my mind for a long time now, but I haven't found any solution so far.
I use Android's Bedtime mode a lot, and it has a helpful feature that let's you quickly "Pause for 30 minutes" or "Turn off for now" from a notification [1].
I don't think the app needs notifications as such, but it could have quick access to a pause button.
[1] https://img.gadgethacks.com/img/original/21/75/6372310031848...
I have my own thought and also one in response to the "taking a photo" type tasks.
I'd like a drop down of some tasks I predefined, so I can answer with one of those.
Things like "answering a message" that I can choose instead of entering one. There is occasionally one message with 3 choices, I think, about how this aligns with my goals. So something like that but user defined.
Second thing, maybe a couple of those options could be tied to app launch so clicking it takes you to the common task. For example, "Taking a photo" could drop me right back into the camera app.
Great app, I've been using it all day and just doing so is insightful. And glad this comment chain led me to the "cooldown" function.
Maybe make suggestions based on screentime if possible.
You should add this as a premium-feature for 9,99 USD monthly subscription :)
It forced me to reckon with the fact that tapping on these apps is often a system 1 instinct. The forced delay to reinstall the app is an escape hatch into system 2 thinking, a mode in which I normally realize I don't even want to use the app, I'm just bored. And then I'd pick up a book or use my newspaper-reader-app (i.e. a more intent/system 2-driven choice).
Off-loading apps or even just removing them from the home screen is really helpful. It gives your system 2 brain an opportunity to mutate your environment to make system 1 processes lead to more fruitful outcomes.
For the same reason, I clear my browser history every month or so and avoid bookmarking certain sites like hn or reddit.
I configure a random password for Screen Time so that it's a real hassle to circumvent the daily limit when I get over it.
I don't have those yet but I wish I did! I was just thinking back to how cool the iPod was back in the day. (The one before touchscreens!)
(I was also thinking how cool it would be if it had the iPod's UI but Rockbox's (and every other mp3 player in human history) support for just putting folders full of files on it... but I guess I'll keep dreaming!)
This has the side effect of me listening to music more intentionally and not wasting time selecting tracks and skipping around. Listening to a full album is great, something I rarely did before. And physically owning music feels great.
Sure, it is less practical for traveling but it mostly sits on my desk to help me get through work. And CD's having a fixed run length helps me to take breaks so my tinnitus does not get worse.
Alas, ever since Apple showed it's Courage™ by ditching the audio jack, Bluetooth headphones became ubiquitous (doubly so thanks to AirPods and alternatives). They're nice and all, but they also have mikes, so you want to use them for calling and voice messaging too, and then you can also put notifications on them, ... with Bluetooth device switching being what it is, this complements and reinforces smartphone's role as single device for everything.
EDIT: I wonder if it's possible to have some kind of mixer wearable that would accept wireless audio streams (both in "music" and "headset" modes) from multiple devices, mix them together, and route to a single set of wireless headphones. That would solve a lot of the issues I have with wireless audio in practice.
For camera, turning the screen off while camera app is open means I can just press the power button and slide up, and I'm back in camera app (unless Intenty interferes).
For flashlight, having a quick key (that works even when the phone is locked) is a qualitative change - I use the phone flashlight much more often, now that I can casually turn it on and off with zero effort, like a traditional torch. There are actually two major use cases I have for that daily:
- In autumn/winter, by the time I pick my kids up from the kindergarten, it's already dark. There's a stretch of pavement that's pitch dark, so I just casually light it up as we walk over it.
(That was the driver behind me changing the button mapping from camera to flashlight; having done that, I now instinctively turn the flashlight on and off as I walk, lighting up dark spots.)
- Have you ever tried to read something from a phone while walking at night? It's a big problem - the screen pretty much blinds you, unless you turn the brightness down to minimum. You can't read and monitor ground under your feet at the same time. However, if you also turn on the flashlight, the brightness of the screen and the light reflecting off the ground are similar, so reading becomes comfortable and you regain awareness of terrain.
I figured out that trick long ago, first with Kindle (Paperwhite) - I'd put my phone against the back of the Kindle, turn the backlight on the reader, and the flashlight on the phone. But it works even better for reading from the phone itself.
I'm even more excited about browser or OS agents being able to unilaterally scrub the web of all advertisements, spam, polarized toxicity, etc. Forget adblock - I can effectively block all the bad things Google, Meta, Twitter, etc. do and their army of PMs won't be able to stop me.
This tech is going to rip the advertiser and algorithmic madness out of the internet and make it serve me and only me.
I have thought of a workaround. Instead of an app that asks "Why?", a sticker on your phone that asks "Why?" Or maybe just a question mark. I will order one for my phone.
Tools that help with managing digital health and screen use can help you slow down access to any problematic apps a bit more than others.
maybe a better solution would be "why?" when you switch or launch apps. Then being able to select apps that don't cause the prompt like camera and bank apps
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.
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.
--
[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.
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.
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.
To login to my work Microsoft account requires a passcode and then three face scans.
That's why MFA is referred to as defense-in-depth rather than being a better password.
The idea was that if you're unlocking your screen, you should at least: (1) reinforce a mantra, or (2) force yourself to acknowledge you shouldn't be unlocking the phone.
Happy to share notes if you think that would be helpful.
I even remember in 2019 finding an app that was using a popup after unlock to learn words of a foreign language, unfortunately, it closed and I cannot recall the name.
I would be happy to see the notes.
We also had a lock screen app that you needed to play a tune on an instrument in order to unlock the screen. This too died because of Google maintenance burden (it had 500k downloads IIRC). Here's what I could find about that one: https://music-lock.en.softonic.com/android
- 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
Done and done.
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.