Tide

Attention has a tide.

Most screen-time apps are locks. You set a limit, a door slams, and you spend the next week learning how to pick it. Tide is an accountant instead — a daily drift budget you can spend how you like, and feel run out.

Coming to iPhone.

Four ideas, and none of them is a wall.

75

The budget

Set what an honest day looks like. Watch it drain. Most people find that watching is enough — no door has to close for the number to mean something.

20

The breath

Twenty seconds between the reach and the app. Not a punishment — a gap, which is usually where the decision actually lives.

3

Focus sessions

Twenty-five minutes to two hours, in three strictnesses. Gentle logs it. Firm makes you wait and give a reason. Sealed means nothing gets through until the timer ends.

4

A crew

Up to four people who see one number about you: how far under budget you were this week. Being watched is the oldest commitment device there is.

Your crew sees a number. They never see which apps you use.

Which apps you opened, and for how long, stays on your phone. What reaches our server is totals: your budget, what you spent against it, and how many reaches you stopped. There is no table for per-app usage in our database, and there will not be one — that is a design decision, not a setting you have to find.

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