one sec | screen time + focus 4+

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.

I’ve been trying a few things to make my phone more annoying to use, or helpful when I do, and not a boredom eraser. One Sec is something that I wish I had years ago. I finally feel like I have the opportunity to fill my downtime with something other than my phone screen! My adhd makes all of this harder than it might otherwise be, but with a little help from this app (and a lot of work on myself), I’ve started journaling, meditating, budgeting better, doing more real-world projects around the house… the Structured integration helps with that too. By the way, I’m not sure why people are complaining about the price. $20 for a whole year is practically nothing.

Something I’d like to be able to do with the app is set a time limit on how long you can use a particular app before the interventions start. That way (if I’m good) I don’t have to wait for the intervention while I’m out at the store and trying to look something up before buying it, for example.

Firstly I want to say that is app is %100 worth the money. The app's main feature where it focuses you to wait an certain amount of time before opening a configured app is prefect for curbing mindless dopamine hunting. Using this app has certainly brought back intentionality to my phone use. That being said there are two curial features I wish this app had that would make it prefect. The first is that it's too easy to turn off blocks and interventions, I wish I could setup a passcode needed to turn off blocks and interventions. Ideally one would have a trusted person setup the passcode so that one wouldn't be able to turn it off even if they wanted to. I often find a flimsy reason to turn off a block or intervention and I end up relapsing. The second thing I wish this app had is the ability to set daily allowances for app use that would then block the app after the allowance ran out. I understand that somethings are not possible within the apple ecosystem so if that is the case with this things I will change my rating to 5 stars. I will also change my rating to 5 stars if these features do get added.