TemptShield: Screen Time Pause

TemptShield puts a 10-second pause between you and the apps that pull you in.

No blocking. No lockouts. No account. You flag the apps that eat your evenings — YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, a game, whatever yours are — and the next time you open one, a full-screen pause appears with a countdown. "Close it" works instantly. "Open anyway" stays locked until the timer runs out.

That's the whole idea. Most times you open those apps, you didn't decide to — your thumb did. Ten seconds is long enough for the decision to come back to you.


HOW IT WORKS

1. Add the apps that tempt you from the home screen.
2. Open one, and the pause appears over it with a countdown.
3. Close it, or wait out the timer and open it anyway. Either way, the attempt is counted.
4. Watch your "tackled" number grow. That number is the point.


TUNE THE FRICTION

• Waiting time — 3 to 60 seconds. How long "Open anyway" stays locked.
• "Open anyway" pass — 1 to 60 minutes. A floating countdown shows what's left; when it ends, the pause comes back.
• Toggle any watched app on or off, or remove it, in one tap.

A longer wait and a shorter pass make slipping more expensive. Start gentle and tighten it.


SEE THE PATTERN

Every attempt is recorded as tackled or opened anyway:

• Today's score on the home screen.
• This week and this month, with a "% resisted" figure.
• A day-by-day breakdown, plus per-app totals so you can see which one is really the problem.


PERMISSIONS — PLEASE READ BEFORE INSTALLING

TemptShield needs two special Android permissions and does nothing at all without them. You grant both from banners on the home screen:

• Usage access — to notice when a watched app comes to the foreground.
• Display over other apps — to draw the pause on top of it.

TemptShield sees only WHICH app opened. Never what you do inside it — no browsing history, no URLs, no message contents, no keystrokes, no screenshots.


PRIVATE BY DESIGN

• No account, no sign-in, no email address.
• No servers. Nothing leaves your phone, so there is nothing to leak.
• No ads, no trackers, no analytics.
• Your app list and counters live in local storage on the device. Uninstall and they are gone — honestly gone. A reinstall starts back at zero.


OPTIONAL: KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR DNS FILTER

If you use Android's built-in Private DNS with a filtering resolver such as Cloudflare Family, TemptShield shows a green shield while it is active and a red card — tap to jump straight to the Android setting — if it has been switched off or changed.

To be clear: TemptShield does not filter any content itself. The filtering is done by whichever DNS provider you choose in Android's own settings. The app only reports, honestly, whether that setting is still on.


WHO IT'S FOR

People who don't want to be policed — just slowed down. If you've tried hard blockers and uninstalled them in a week, the friction model may suit you better: you always keep the final say, you just have to spend ten seconds to use it.

TemptShield is not a parental control, an accountability partner, or a surveillance tool. Nobody gets a report but you, because there is nobody to send one to.