one sec | screen time + focus

Crazy how these large corporations made social media apps so powerful that I'll subconsciously go on Instagram and snapchat without even thinking about it. I'm not a scroller and wouldn't endlessly scroll on social media but I would go on them to check notifications. Whenever there was pause in a video game, nothing going on in the moment in life, or I'm bored, I'd naturally pick up my phone and by default go to Instagram with 0 purpose. After I downloaded one sec and bought premium it made my unconscious habit conscious. It makes me ask myself in my head, "is there anything I absolutely need to do on this app?" If the answer is no, I get off. The habit has subsided too because my mind associates checking social media as one sec popping up. So grateful I got this because I'm a lot more mindful and in the moment than I was before and I'm a lot happier and less irritable. I highly recommend you get this app because if your someone like me who doesn't wanna delete their socials, this makes you in control of your decision to go on these high dopamine apps rather than the corporation being in control of you.

This is a very clever application that does precisely what it’s advertised to. It requires a form of intervention before opening an app of your choice, and this is highly customizable. There are lots of interventions to choose from, and how long you want them to be. You can also have it choose a random exercise for you, and it supports website blocking as well, which is nice. You can also set up a bedtime schedule where it blocks all apps and websites. It provides an informative dashboard detailing approximately how much time you saved. However, I really can’t get behind the modern era of subscription based apps. Especially for the lifetime license costing a whopping FIFTY dollars, and SEVENTY for a “family plan”. I don’t have any problem supporting independent developers and paying for software, but I personally feel like this is overpriced for what it does. Most of it is just relying on the iOS shortcuts functionality anyway, and all the app is doing is showing a pretty GUI and recording the time. You could replicate something similar in shortcuts (although not entirely, like website blocking for instance.) If you don’t mind the cost, go for it, but I would probably pay $15 maximum for a lifetime license, not $50. Especially considering many people using this are likely college students.

This app is brilliant. I have it on all my iOS devices. I feel like most screen time reducing apps come and go, as half baked ideas put together over a weekend. This one is different. It feels as put together, or even more so, than Apple’s own screen time controls. It’s obvious the creator of this app made this for themselves as it applies to users’ real uses very well. I’m someone who uses various ways to make my devices more “dumb” or minimal. I mix this with feed blockers, screen time settings, greyscale, and not having social media apps on my phone. This is a very important piece of my already pretty elaborate puzzle. This app can probably do more than I can grasp right now. I just use it to slow load apps and make them get progressively slower overtime. As my dopamine rush gets slower every time I wait for an app to load, I could just delete this app out of frustration. But I don’t. I feel like a kid knowing maybe it’s best if only mom can open the cookie jar. I also use the app for app blocking which is super cool. My only request is if I could set a timer for app blocking. What I mean: set timer and in 25 minutes all apps on the list will be blocked. That way maybe when I need or want to go down the rabbit hole, there is going to be a hard cutoff upcoming that I can’t stop. Otherwise I’ll just willingly not stop and go down a binge, which I unfortunately too often do.