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Deliberate phone use is a difficult habit to develop. Operating systems like iOS and Android, along with social networks like Instagram and TikTok, have built in timers, reminders, and controls around app or platform usage.
But sometimes, you unintentionally unlock your phone as a force of habit to end up doing nothing or scrolling through schedules. To get rid of this habit, Ukrainian developer Yaroslav Niznaradko built an Android application called Intentiwhich prompts you to provide a reason or perform an action such as breathing or stretching every time you unlock your phone.
Niznaradko started thinking about this issue in 2019 when he spent a lot of time on his phone.
“I found myself checking my phone a lot (email, social media, news). I tried screen time limits, focus modes, and app blockers, but they were more frustrating than helpful. And I got an idea. What if I had to announce And I set my intention before using the phone? This is where it all started. As a prototype, I even tried writing my intentions in a notebook every time I needed my phone, and it worked for me,” he told TechCrunch via email.
It released an initial version in 2020, but it was limited to one use to ask users questions about why they unlocked their devices. He also developed an iOS version but realized that the platform had many limitations. Ultimately, the project was halted until 2023.
Last year, he renamed the app to Intenty and focused on the Android version. Since ChatGPT was newly released at the time, he decided to ask people about their intentions to use the device in a chat-style interface when unlocking the phone. But this did not stick to the users.
After researching human-computer interaction, Niznaradko released a redesigned version this summer that allows users to customize alerts. You can select nudges from several categories, such as intent, necessity, grounding, positivity, and simplicity. All of these categories have different numbers of prompts, and you can add a new category or prompt as well.
You can swipe out of the checkout screen to avoid entering the reason, but then it defeats the purpose of using the app. You can set a cool-down time, so that the signal doesn’t appear immediately after the phone is locked, in case you’re waiting for someone to answer. What’s more, you can adjust the intensity of pop-ups by setting them to appear on every second, third, fifth or tenth open.
The app also shows you the history of your answer logs and the number of times you’ve unlocked the phone over time.
Intenty is free, but you can pay $1.99 per month to unlock Schedule Payments, a hard mode that forces you to enter a reason, and a Lock button to lock your phone from the payment screen.
There are other apps that help you reduce screen time: One secondwhich shows you an exercise or action when you open a social media app, and Minimal screen timewhich turns your phone into a device with limited functions.
After Neznaradko posted about the new version of Intenty On Hacker News On Wednesday, several people provided comments about how they might want the app to behave and not alert them every time. Understanding the unlock pattern and not pushing the user when they want to do a quick action like taking a photo is a challenge, Neznaradko said.
It creates a reminder or popup during a long phone usage session. He’s also exploring a way to deal with alert fatigue and automatically update the content of those prompts. In the long run, he might want to add photos or videos as well.
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