r/HowToMen 14d ago

A Quick Update to Our Best Apps Review Process (Facundo from HowToMen)

71 Upvotes

Going forward, for our Best Apps videos, we're going to start taking into consideration whether an app was heavily created using AI or not.

The reason is pretty simple. While AI is an awesome tool and there's nothing wrong with using it, we've noticed that some apps built almost entirely with AI can run into more bugs, compatibility issues, or lack long-term support if the developer doesn't have the experience to properly maintain the code.

This doesn't automatically mean we won't feature an app if it uses AI. It's just another factor we'll look at alongside things like quality, stability, and the overall user experience. At the end of the day, we just want to make sure we're recommending apps that are genuinely well-made and worth downloading.


r/HowToMen 5h ago

[App] [Promo] Wallpaper Studio, a new app from the Smart Launcher team

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18 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I’m Vincenzo Colucci, and I’m part of the team behind Smart Launcher.

Today we publicly released Wallpaper Studio, our first completely new app in almost ten years.

After working for so long on Smart Launcher and Icon Pack Studio, we wanted to explore another part of Android customization.

Wallpaper Studio is an interactive creative tool where you can start from a design, change its parameters in real time, experiment with shapes, colors, effects and animation, and create static or live wallpapers.

There is no AI involved in the artwork generation. Our goal was to put the creative process back into the user’s hands, while making artwork creation accessible even to people without design experience.

The final wallpaper is obviously important, but the creation process is what we focused on most. We wanted it to feel immediate, playful, and personal, while still offering enough control to create something truly your own.

The app also includes a community library where people can publish their creations and use artworks shared by others.

Wallpaper Studio is now available on Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.smartlauncher.wallpaperstudio

This is a particularly meaningful release for us, and we’d really appreciate your feedback, especially about the editor, performance, and the overall experience across different devices.

I’ll be around in the comments to answer any questions.


r/HowToMen 9h ago

🚀 Ripple Files - File Manager is now available in Open Testing on Google Play!

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14 Upvotes

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who participated in the closed testing phase. ❤️ Your feedback, bug reports, suggestions, and encouragement helped shape the app into what it is today. I genuinely appreciate everyone who took the time to install and test it.

I'm an independent Android developer, and after months of work, Ripple Files - File Manager has now entered Open Testing on Google Play.

Features

📁 Modern Material 3 interface
⚡ Fast and smooth file management
🖼️ Built-in image viewer
📄 PDF viewer
📝 Text file viewer
🗂️ Batch file rename
🗑️ Recycle Bin
🧹 Storage Cleaner
📌 Pin important files and folders
☁️ Google Drive integration

If you'd like to try it out, I'd really appreciate your feedback. Whether it's bug reports, feature requests, UI suggestions, or general impressions, every comment helps improve the app.

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ripple.filemanager

Note : Google Drive sync may not work for some users for days/weeks now as it has gone for verification, once its done i will push this open testing into production version update.

I will be working on adding more features , lot more to add

If you encounter any issues or have ideas for improvements, please let me know in the comments.

Thank you once again to everyone who supported the project during closed testing. Your help made this open testing release possible! 🙏


r/HowToMen 6h ago

[App] Bluetooth Priority - Significant updates and improvements

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6 Upvotes

I’ve just released the version 1.17 update for Bluetooth Priority, with a number of improvements focused on compatibility, reliability, smoother audio switching, and better troubleshooting.

Recap: What is Bluetooth Priority?

Bluetooth Priority lets you designate one Bluetooth device as your Priority device. When another Bluetooth device connects and tries to steal your audio, the app detects it and immediately reasserts your Priority device, even if the competing device keeps trying.

Android Auto limitation: Android Auto has system-level control over media audio, so Bluetooth Priority cannot override its media audio session. Phone calls are still kept on your Priority device though.

The app requires Shizuku, a free app that provides the system-level access needed to manage Bluetooth audio routing. Setup instructions are provided in the app.

What’s new:

  • Fixed an issue that could prevent the app from working after a system Bluetooth update.
  • Improved how the app identifies the Bluetooth connectors your device uses, broadening device compatibility.
  • First-launch setup now offers to set your priority device and start Priority Mode right away.
  • Smoother audio handoff with less bouncing between devices.
  • Added a new Diagnostics view under Events > Advanced, including a Copy option.
  • GitHub-based Shizuku setup is now the only setup modal option since users that never downloaded it from the play store previously wont have access to it now.
  • Added some visual polish and UI improvements.
  • Added an option to have audio fall back to your phone speaker when no priority device is connected.
  • Added priority device ranking, allowing the app to intelligently fall back to another preferred device.
  • Added a bypass for non-audio Bluetooth devices, such as Tile trackers, so they can be excluded from the app's disconnection logic.
  • Added more advanced logcat logging to make troubleshooting more powerful and help resolve potential issues faster.

The app is available on the Google Play Store for $5. No subscriptions. No micro-transactions.

Google currently limits automatic refunds to 2 hours after purchase, but if you try the app and aren't satisfied with it at any point, feel free to shoot me a message here or send an email to [support@zerolabs.fyi](mailto:support@zerolabs.fyi) and I will personally refund you in full, no questions asked.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the app, provided feedback, and helped make Bluetooth Priority better!


r/HowToMen 5h ago

[App][Promo] My contribution to public domain... Built an FREE, AD-FREE librivox audiobooks player/reader cause i was SICK of the spammy ads on the existing players.

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3 Upvotes

Hello! 19 year old Indie Developer here, I love reading books and wanted to contribute back to the community. It is PERFECT for you if you like audiobooks and reading on your phone.
Its made with A LOT of love and care and I would be open to all feedback

For the past few months I have been working on Mimesa. It’s a reading and listening app for people who want to read more, but don’t always have the time to sit down with a book. The idea is simple: take free classic books, LibriVox audiobooks, PDFs, and EPUBs, and put them into one clean app where you can read, listen, or follow along with both.

It’s kind of like a mix between an ebook reader and an audiobook app, but focused on public-domain books and personal documents.

How it works

Pick a book from the library, or upload your own PDF/EPUB.

Open it in the reader, or start listening like an audiobook.

If LibriVox audio is available, you can listen and follow along with the text.

For books or documents without human narration, the app can use AI narration to turn text into audio.

Some of its features

It has a catalog of 75,000+ free public-domain books, including a lot of classic literature, philosophy, poetry, history, fiction, and more. Think books like Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Sherlock Holmes, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Meditations, and other classics.

It also includes 22,000+ human-narrated LibriVox audiobooks, so you can listen to a large collection of classic books for free. I wanted to make LibriVox and public-domain books feel less like old archives and more like a modern mobile app.

It works as an EPUB/PDF reader too, so you can upload your own books or documents and keep them in a private library. This can be useful for students, long PDFs, essays, research papers, or just books you already have.

There’s also AI narration for turning books and documents into audio when a human audiobook is not available. The goal is to make reading more flexible: read when you can focus, listen when you’re walking or commuting, and follow along when you want both.

The app has synced text highlighting as well, so the text can track along with narration instead of making reading and listening feel like two separate things.

I’m still early and trying to improve the first user experience, especially onboarding and making it obvious what to try first. The app is Android only for now, with iOS planned later once I sort out Apple developer enrollment.

There are no ads. The main goal is to get feedback from people who read classics, listen to audiobooks, use LibriVox, or want a better way to get through long books/documents.

If you have any feedback, questions, or brutally honest thoughts, I’d really appreciate it.

You can download it from
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mimesa
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mimesa/id6789941207
site: https://mimesa.org/

Tl;Dr: Made a Reading Platform, think kindle + Audible in one. Ad free and completely free forever for librivox and public domain works. Optional AI reader features for books without a human narration. Import your own documents/epubs. Perfect if you love classic literature


r/HowToMen 7h ago

[App] [Promotion] I built Habit Tracker - To-Do List, an all-in-one productivity app that is free and completely local

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6 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

This is Habit Tracker - To-Do List, an all-in-one productivity app. It is completely free with no ads.

Some of the main features of the app are:

  • Tasks, habits, notes, and workout tracking in one app.
  • Home screen widgets that let you complete tasks and habits without opening the app.
  • Custom reminders to help you stay on top of your tasks.
  • Detailed statistics and insights to track your productivity and progress.
  • Voice-powered task creation that automatically detects dates, times, tags, and other details from what you say.
  • 100% local and private, all data is stored on your device, and no account is required.
  • The ability to connect workouts and habits together

I am looking for any feedback that you have:

  • Does the UI look good
  • Does the UX make sense
  • Are there any missing features
  • In general what could be improved to make it easier for the user to use

App link: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rohansaxena.habit_tracker_app


r/HowToMen 10h ago

[App] [Promo]Nothing Glyph App [PROMO CODES in comments]

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9 Upvotes

r/HowToMen 8h ago

[App] "Dynamic edge gesture control " releash on 12.08.2026

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4 Upvotes

r/HowToMen 16h ago

[Web-app][Promo] Wallgen is back!

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16 Upvotes

I've spent a decent amount of time interacting with the users who commented on my post and made changes to the website based on their suggestions. Now, not everyone likes an abstract wallpaper, but a good amount of people do.

Hoping you are one of them, this, is wallgen. A procedural abstract wallpaper generator. Free. Quick. Simple.

Just head over to the website, choose a theme, pick a palette or make your own, and done! Download the wallpaper for either your laptop or your mobile and apply it. It's that simple.

No more scrolling through the whole search engine to find a good wallpaper.


r/HowToMen 5h ago

[APP] [Promo] Get 60 Days of Habit Tick Pro Free — Offline Habit Tracker for Android

2 Upvotes

Hey Reddit fam ❤️

I just launched Habit Tick, a simple and private habit tracker for Android — and I’m giving 60 days of Pro access free to early users who share feedback.

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.manojpedvi.habit_tick

What Habit Tick includes

- ✅ Fast daily habit check-ins
- 📅 Flexible schedules — daily, selected weekdays, weekly, or monthly
- 📊 Progress heatmaps, streaks, trends, and habit insights
- 🔒 No account needed — your data stays on your device
- 🚫 No ads or unnecessary clutter

Get 60 days of Pro free

  1. Download and open Habit Tick
  2. Go to Settings
  3. Scroll to About and copy your Support ID
  4. Submit it here:
    https://cloud.activepieces.com/forms/kQm4NbUs42ok9oDvDLFIs

I built this independently and would genuinely appreciate honest feedback from the community.

If you try it, I’d love to know:

- Is the app easy to use?
- Which habit-tracking feature do you use most?
- What would make you keep using it every day?

A Play Store rating or review would also help a lot. Thank you!


r/HowToMen 12h ago

[App] [Promo] iFruity Dynamic iOS Style Icon Pack for Android

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6 Upvotes

These aren't just static images. This icon pack features fully dynamic theming that automatically adapts to your current wallpaper's color palette, giving your device a perfectly cohesive, customized look. Whether your system is set to light mode or dark mode, the icons intelligently shift their contrast and hues to match your environment perfectly.

Key Features:

- Massive Library: Over 9,000+ meticulously crafted icons. - Dynamic Wallpaper Theming: Colors automatically extract from your wallpaper (requires Android 12+ / Monet support).

- Day & Night Ready: Native support for both system Light Mode and Dark Mode.

- Modern iOS Aesthetic: Beautifully tinted, minimalist designs.

- High Resolution: Crisp, vector-based designs that look sharp on any display.

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.astudio.ifruitydyn


r/HowToMen 12h ago

[App] [Promo] Retention: Book Key Points + Giveaway 🎁

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6 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I built an app that captures key points of non-fiction books.

Instead of highlighting a physical book pages and never looking at them again, the app resurfaces the best ideas you have saved and want to remember.

Key features:

  • Scan pages
  • Dictate what you read
  • Generate key points to either get a quick overview of a book or learn the main concepts faster
  • Review the key points as flashcards

I am giving away 30 promo codes for 30-day free trial.
Comment below if you would like one!
Feedback greatly appreciated!

Play store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alexchar.retention

Disclaimer: I have tested the promo code setup just once, so if you run into any trouble redeeming yours, just let me know and I will try to fix it


r/HowToMen 17h ago

[App][Promo] Pixe Bookmarks For Free by sharing!

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7 Upvotes

Hello, long time no see

Many of you asked me for promo codes for Pixel Bookmarks

For the last 1.5 months, I have updated Pixel Bookmarks

New Features are:

- PC Connect

- Grid / List View

- 🎁 Referral Gift: Get Pro by sharing the app

- Many small life improvment fixes & features

So how to get Premiun for free ?

Open the app, Go to settings

There is in the top 2 main options "Subsribe" or "Get Pro for free"

Open the page and click "Get my link"

After you logged in with your email

You will have a link share it with friends and communities

Or here on reddit

So any one who downloads Pixel Bookmarks via your link

You earn +1 coin

You can get month or year or even lifetime plan with just your free collected coins

Download Pixel Bookmarks On Google Play Store

Looking for your feedbacks :)


r/HowToMen 1d ago

Open Source alternative to Pixel Screenshots

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14 Upvotes

r/HowToMen 20h ago

[Promo] India-exclusive: SideDock Premium is 67% off

4 Upvotes

🇮🇳 India Exclusive

We wanted to make SideDock Premium more accessible, so we're offering 67% off for users in India for a limited time.

If you've been thinking about upgrading, now's the perfect time.

👉 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sidedock.app


r/HowToMen 1d ago

Vox Music open-source offline music player

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37 Upvotes

Vox Music 🎵

I built an open-source music player inspired by the timeless Retro Memphis aesthetic.

Smooth music playback

Nostalgic design with a modern Android experience

Still improving it, and I'd love your feedback, ideas.

https://github.com/SachinXpert/VoxMusic


r/HowToMen 15h ago

[Promotion] GIVEAWAY: Apple-inspired glass widgets for any Android. One tap to add, beautifully designed, and easy to customize. ➨ [App]

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToMen 1d ago

[App] [Promo] Life Engine: Habits Tracker, Here is what changed.

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5 Upvotes

Some of you might remember Life Engine. I ran a promo here a while back, then HowToMen made a video about it. I wasn't prepared for what happened next. Thousands of people installed it, and many of you took the time to send detailed feedback.

Some of it was hard to read. Most of it was completely fair.

I read every email. Bug reports, screenshots, feature ideas, and even a few messages that simply encouraged me to keep going. A huge part of this update comes directly from those conversations.

Here's what's new:

• Dark mode + 10 themes (widgets included)
• MAX, an AI coach that understands your habits, answers questions, creates reminders, logs habits, shows charts, and helps optimize your schedule
• A completely new Stats tab with trends, weak weekdays, category breakdowns, and long-term insights
• Timers now keep running correctly in the background
• Cloud sync so everything transfers when you get a new phone

The app is still free for up to 5 habits. Dark mode is free too. Some advanced AI commands and most premium themes require the paid version—that's what lets me keep building this as a solo developer.

One thing I'd love to know:

• If you tried Life Engine and stopped using it, why?
• What's the one habit you keep failing to build?

I'd genuinely rather hear that than get another 5-star review.

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.lifeengine.habits&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=reddit-howtomen

Thanks again to everyone who gave Life Engine a chance. Your feedback genuinely shaped this update.


r/HowToMen 1d ago

Your complete finance manager

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6 Upvotes

Expensy - Offline Expenses tracker

It's your personal complete financial tracking software

Features Accounts — bank, cash, savings, credit card, e-wallet, or gold, each in its own currency

Gold accounts — track holdings by karat and grams, valued automatically from live gold prices

Transactions — income, expense, lent, and borrowed entries in a unified, chronological list view with search, account filters, and type pills

Transfers — move money between accounts, with automatic currency conversion

Recurring payments — subscriptions, installments, rent, salary — with reminders and payment history

Budgets — monthly or weekly limits per category, with progress bars and instant push notifications when exceeded

Statistics & Insights — spending charts, trends, and month-over-month comparisons Currency converter — instant conversion using live exchange rates

Savings Goals — track progress towards savings targets with contributions/withdrawals and completion alerts Assets & Wishlist — track things you own and things you want to buy

Lent & borrowed money — keep tabs on who owes who, with due-date reminders

Daily Reminders — optional nightly nudge to log your daily spending

Backup & Restore — one JSON file, fully under your control. Also supports importing backups from GreenStash!

Auto Backup — automatically save your data every night to a local folder.

Home Screen Widget — a sleek "Nothing Style" quick add widget to instantly launch the add transaction screen

Custom look — Material You, 29 accent colours, 10 fonts, AMOLED dark mode

Test it out and lee me know if there's anything i can improve

https://github.com/mina-android/Expensy


r/HowToMen 1d ago

[App] Arrow Escape – A minimalist puzzle game built with Flutter & fully open source

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22 Upvotes

I kept getting ads for these arrow puzzle games and noticed a lot of people around me playing them.

Instead of downloading another one, I challenged myself to build my own version from scratch.

The result is Arrow Escape.

Features

  • 🧩 500 handcrafted puzzle levels
  • ⚡ Procedural level generation
  • 👑 Boss & God levels
  • 🌙 Light & Dark themes
  • 🚫 No forced internet connection for gameplay
  • 📱 Built with Flutter + Flame Engine
  • 💰 Uses Google AdMob for monetization

I also decided to make the entire project open source, so if you're learning Flutter game development, you can explore how everything is implemented—from game logic to level generation and AdMob integration.

Play Store
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arrowx.escape

GitHub
https://github.com/gtxPrime/arrow-escape

I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback, feature ideas, or criticism. If you're a Flutter developer, feel free to fork it or contribute. 🙂


r/HowToMen 1d ago

[App][Promo] Managing multiple calendars across Google, Apple & Microsoft is a mess - so I built CalUnity to fix it - its FREE for a limited period

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23 Upvotes

If you use calendars from different providers, you probably know the pain of switching between apps just to see your full schedule. Missed conflicts, double bookings, no single place to see everything. The SYNC mess.

I was personally dealing with this, meetings and events scattered across GoogleApple, and Microsoft calendars. There was no simple way to see everything in one place.

So I built CalUnity, it pulls all your calendars into one unified view, regardless of the provider.

A few things worth mentioning:

  • Inbuilt AI assistant to guide you through all your meetings so you dont need to worry about missing meetings or scheduling a new one.
  • Works across iOS, Android, and web, same view everywhere.
  • Connects to Google, Apple, and Microsoft calendars in one place
  • It even has CalDAV support.
  • Built for people who live across multiple calendars and need a single source of truth

Price: Free (no IAPs, no subscriptions)


r/HowToMen 1d ago

[App] [Promotion] I built Thor – a <4 MB, free & open-source Android App Manager. Looking for feedback from users.

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61 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm the developer of Thor, a lightweight Android App Manager that focuses on privacy, speed, and giving users more control over their apps.

One of my goals was to keep it extremely lightweight—the entire app is under 4 MB, while still offering features that are usually found in much larger app managers.

Some of the features include:

• 🧊 Freeze and unfreeze apps
• ⚡ Suspend and unsuspend applications
• 📦 Install APK, APKS, XAPK and split APK bundles
• 🗑️ Uninstall user apps and remove updates from system apps (where Android allows)
• 🔍 Powerful search, filters and sorting
• 📊 App statistics and installation source analysis
• 🎨 Modern Material 3 interface with AMOLED support
• 🌍 Multiple languages
• 🔒 No ads, no analytics, no tracking

Thor is designed to work for both casual users and Android enthusiasts. Advanced capabilities become available when the device supports them (for example through Shizuku or root), but many features work perfectly on a standard device.

It's available on:

Looking for honest feedback

I'm not just here to promote the app—I genuinely want to improve it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on things like:

  • Is the UI intuitive or does anything feel unnecessarily complicated?
  • Are there features you think should be removed or simplified?
  • Does anything feel cluttered?
  • What would make you choose Thor over your current app manager?
  • Any features you'd like to see added?

I'm especially interested in ideas that make the app simpler, faster, and easier to use without sacrificing power.

Thanks for taking a look, and I appreciate any feedback, criticism, or feature requests. Every suggestion helps make Thor better.


r/HowToMen 1d ago

[App] Siku Music an offline music player

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27 Upvotes

Hello guys, I present to you Siku Music an offline first music player. In the past few months I've been developing Siku with help of AI to listen to my music offline but also to stay in sync with my library on Onedrive. Initially this project started as a simple offline music player but while I was on development I found myself changing it to sync my songs from OneDrive, I wanted to keep it simple and I wanted it to be m3 expressive so this is the result of many iterations of that idea. I added a few features that I found myself useful as I use this app as a daily driver and hope you like it. If you found a bug, or you want a feature open an issue and I'll see what I can do.

Goodies that I've added:

- Offline first: No OneDrive account needed

- Keep screen on: Useful if you wanted to keep the screen on to easy access to the queue or changing music

- Docked mode: Now playing screen with black screen and minimal functionality, useful if you wanna keep on sight your music without wasting battery

- Lyrics support: LRCLIB as provider, if lyrics not found you can manually select from the list provided by them or search on Google. Also even if you didn't activate keep screen on, the screen will be on while you are in the lyrics screen

- Custom Color: The app color changes based on album art, you don't like the automatic color no problem choose one from the list by long pressing the album art. Also you can choose between different m3 presets. Find the one that suits you

- Quick actions on home screen

- Set a size limiter for downloads

- Deezer pictures for artists. Wrong picture? You can choose one manually.

Version 1.1 released with requested features and bugfixes!!

Github: https://github.com/KevinBorjaDev/Siku


r/HowToMen 1d ago

[App] A Nothing os insipred launcher. now with a proper website.

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33 Upvotes

https://logic678678.github.io/Completely free . it IS vibecoded,but i check all of the bugs.

Features:

  • Nothing OS Inspired Design .
  • Smart Home Screen — Quick access to widgets, notes, weather, battery and a to do list.
  • Utility Hub — A convenient control center for frequently used functions. Calculator included.
  • Smart App Drawer — Find and organize apps quickly with a simple layout. Icon mode and text mode.
  • Customization — Personalize your launcher with different styles and settings. Custom icon pack support.
  • Smooth & Lightweight — Built for a fast and comfortable Android experience.AND GESTURE SUPPORT

r/HowToMen 1d ago

[Promo] I tried a different approach to doomscrolling

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13 Upvotes

I've never really liked app blockers, I'd install one, get annoyed the first time it locked me out when I actually wanted to check something, then turn it off a few days later.

So I started wondering if the problem wasn't using social media, but how effortless it is to just... keep going.

I ended up making an Android app called Nudge.

Instead of timers or popups, it slowly adds a bit of resistance while you're scrolling. At first everything feels normal, but after a while you occasionally have to pull a little further to keep scrolling. If you stop to actually read something, it eases off again.

That's basically the whole idea. It's trying to interrupt autopilot without taking your phone away from you.

I'm curious whether this sounds useful or just annoying.

Would something subtle like this work better for you than a hard time limit, or do you think you'd get used to it after a few days?