Atone: Screen Time Limit

Set a daily limit for your worst apps, and decide what happens when it runs out: no way past it, a wait and a written reason, or a stake you name yourself.

You decide how hard your limit holds.

Atone gives your worst apps a daily limit and blocks them the moment it runs out. How strictly that block holds is yours to set before the first day begins - including whether money is part of it at all.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Seal the promise. Pick the apps that take your day and set how many minutes they get.
2. Choose how hard the limit holds. Three ways, see below.
3. Live the day. Those apps work normally until the minutes are spent.
4. Then they stop opening. The lock screen shows what you wrote when you were still clear-headed.

THE THREE WAYS

No way past it. The apps stay shut until midnight. No exception, not even for you.

Wait and write. Going on takes a hundred seconds of waiting and a reason you type out yourself. No money.

Put money on it. A written reason, no waiting, and an amount you named yourself beforehand.

WHY WAITING AND WRITING WORKS

A five-second delay is something you learn to click through. A hundred seconds is not - an impulse does not last that long. And having to write down why it has to be now often shows you how thin the reason is.

Whatever you set is sealed for the day. Changes take effect tomorrow, never now, because the moment you want to loosen the rule is exactly the moment the rule matters.

IF YOU PUT MONEY ON IT

The stake is not a price for more time. It falls due because you broke your promise, not so that you can carry on. What you owe stays owed until it is paid.

Atone itself never costs you anything, and neither does a day you hold. Choose a way without money and no card is stored and no payment details are given at all. You can remove your card at any time; your promise then continues without money.

Half of our revenue goes to charity. Not half of your stake - half of everything we take in, whether you ever pay a cent. The sums we actually give are published.

YOUR DATA STAYS WITH YOU

Your promise, your stamps and your history stay on your iPhone. No account, no tracking, no analytics, no ads. Atone is built on Apple's Screen Time framework, which means even we never learn which apps you use or for how long. The reason you type when you go on never leaves the device either.

Only if you put money on your promise does a payment provider come into it. Even then it sees a charge, not your day.

WHAT YOU GET

· A daily limit for the apps you choose · A real block when it runs out, not a gentle nudge · Three ways to set how hard it holds - changeable any time, from the next day · A streak counting the days you stayed within the limit · A weekly view of how the promise went · English and German, on-device, no account

Atone does not want your money. It wants you to keep the promise you made to yourself.