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.

I have loved this app since I began using it 6 months ago. It even inspired me to purchase my cousin an iPhone, knowing that I would be able to restrict their screen time and break the dopamine-induced doom scrolling that social media and games can oftentimes induce. When I was going to sign up for the family plan, I saw the price had increased from $25 to $40. For reference, the individual plan is $20. Honestly, if I only intended to add one additional user to the subscription, what incentive is there in not receiving a discount? Look at it this way: 2x individual plans = $40; 2x users on family plan = $40. What's the difference? This is really shortsighted and selfish of the developer, in my opinion, and it makes me want to not even renew the individual subscription. $40 is too much. The app is good and well thought out, but it isn't actually providing that grand of a solution to justify that price, even for multiple users. $25 actually motivated me to add users to the app, given it was only a $5 increase from what I was paying. Doubling the price only frustrates me and makes me want to protest the developer's greed, and it shows that their intent isn't to actually provide a solution and make that accessible to more people, but to squeeze every dollar from their user base. What a careless decision towards users. I'll be deleting the app.