Threshold: Screen Time Pause

Threshold puts a short pause in front of the apps you choose, so opening one is a decision again instead of a reflex. It isn't a blocker that locks you out. It asks one question, and that's often enough to put the phone down sooner. A pause like this works. In a six-week study published in PNAS in 2023, a short pause before an app opened cut how often people opened it by 57%. How it works • Pick the apps that pause from Apple's Screen Time list, like Instagram or TikTok. • When you open one, Threshold's question covers it. Close the app, or say what you came for. • Choose your minutes. The choices change with how much of your daily limit is left. • When time's up, answer in a tap: Completed, Some of it, or Not this time. Or take five more minutes. Back for the same thing? On iOS 26.4 and later, the screen over the app lists your last two reasons, so one tap starts the pause. The pause It starts at ten seconds, and you can set it anywhere from 3 to 30. Complete three visits in a row in an app, and that app's pause gets shorter. Each time you close an app at the pause, Threshold counts it as changing your mind. Your day • One daily limit shared by the apps you pick, and a limit for each app if you want one. • Home shows the minutes you have left, your streak, and your intention score: how often you did what you came for over the last two weeks. • Your streak counts the days in a row you stay under your limit. The first day over each week is a rest day and doesn't end it. • Sessions lists every visit: what you came for, how long you stayed, and how it went. • Widgets for the Home Screen and Lock Screen show your minutes left, and a Live Activity keeps your reason on the Lock Screen while you're in an app. Stone you earn The arch in Threshold is built from stone you earn by staying under your limit: clay at 3 days in a row, sandstone at 7, marble at 30, bronze at 100, and alabaster at 365. Breaks Need a day off? Take a break until tomorrow, until Monday, or for a week, and the apps open without the pause until it ends. Privacy Threshold uses Apple's Screen Time, which keeps the apps you pick private. There's no account and there are no ads, and nothing you write leaves your phone. Threshold needs iOS 17 or later and your permission to use Screen Time. It's also a Chrome extension that puts the same pause in front of the websites you choose.