Launching today
D.off
Screen time limits you unlock by writing a sentence
2 followers
Screen time limits you unlock by writing a sentence
2 followers
D.off helps you break free from phone addiction without willpower. Set time limits per app group, and when you hit them, unlock by writing out a sentence — three on the free tier — or swap one for a 30-second exercise. That pause breaks the autopilot scroll. 70+ achievements, sleep lock (Premium), site blocking across six major browsers, and 7 languages. No ads. The sentence library ships inside the app, so unlocking works with no network.
I built D.off because I kept losing evenings to my phone and every screen time app I tried had the same hole in it: when the limit hits, there's a button that says "5 more minutes," and I always pressed it.
So the unlock isn't a button. When you hit your limit, the lock screen shows a sentence and you type it out. Three sentences on the free tier, ten on premium. They come from a bundled library of 6,274 public-domain passages in total, spread across 8 categories and 7 languages — roughly 700 to 1,100 per language, so an English user is drawing from about 980. Everything ships inside the app, so the unlock works with no network.
You can swap one of those sentences for a 30-second exercise instead — 41 curated clips, push-ups, squats, that kind of thing. There's exactly one escape hatch: a 30-minute emergency unlock for that app group, once per calendar week, resetting Monday. No typing for that one. I left it in on purpose, because an app you can't get out of is an app you uninstall.
The part I'm least sure about is whether the friction is the right amount. Some days three sentences feels like the correct tax on my attention. Some days it feels like I built myself a chore.
Other things in there: per-group sleep lock on a schedule (premium), site blocking in the major browsers — Chrome, Samsung Internet, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Opera — capped at three sites on free, and two home screen widget sizes that a single tap will place for you on Android 8 and up. Turning a site block off used to be two taps; now you write out a commitment line first and then wait 30 minutes before the next one. Blocking something again is instant. The friction only runs one direction.
Google rejected it three times before it went live on August 6th. Not for the site blocker itself — for the prominent-disclosure and declaration requirements around the AccessibilityService it uses. Each rejection quoted the same paragraph but had a different actual cause: no in-app consent dialog, then a store description I never saved plus login details I left blank so the reviewer couldn't get in, then a disclosure buried four steps deep in Settings with a stale demo video. It passed on the fourth try.
Where it stands after four weeks (Play Console, the 28 days to Sept 3): about 5,340 store impressions, 23 installs, 11 monthly actives. Android only for now — iOS is a rewrite, not a port: the native side is written and the Family Controls entitlement is approved, but the Xcode assembly needs a Mac I don't have yet, so I'm not promising a date.
If you try it, the thing I'd most like to hear is where you gave up. Not what's missing — where you stopped typing.