The line between using your phone and your phone using you. Below it: sleep, focus, and the evenings that used to be yours. Thirty makes it the rule.
What you get back
Your phone has stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a habit. You've noticed.
How it works
You pick the six utilities you actually need. Everything else goes away. For example:
Most cravings don't survive twenty minutes. That's the whole trick.
A trusted person holds your rescue code. They decide whether it's an emergency — or whether you're just bored and want to scroll.
Honest
It's not for you if:
You think your phone use is fine. You enjoy your apps the way they are. You need your phone reachable for work in a way that 30 minutes can't cover.
That's a real answer. Use a different launcher. We're not trying to convert you.
It is for you if:
Your phone has stopped feeling like a tool. You've tried other apps. They asked you to be disciplined; you weren't. You want something opinionated — a number, a wall, a brand built around the rule itself.
The number
Multiple research lines (Twenge et al. on screen time and adolescent depression; CDC and APA recommendations on adult digital wellbeing) point to roughly two hours of recreational use per day as the threshold above which sleep, mood, and posture metrics start declining noticeably.
30 minutes leaves a comfortable margin. Not at the edge. Well within the calm zone. Half the strict-healthy maximum.
You're not white-knuckling a maximum. You're aiming for a low, sustainable level — the kind people had before phones became feeds.
Why this exists
Right now your phone is a tax — on your time, your sleep, your attention, your conversations.
The companies that built the apps don't want you to spend less time on them. Their incentives oppose yours. No update will fix this. No "wellbeing dashboard" will fix this. The phone needs to actively get out of your way, on your behalf, against the apps that built it.
Thirty is what that looks like. A launcher that hides the apps. A counter that doesn't lie about what it's measuring. A 30 you can't change.
Questions
Some days you'll go over. The bar turns red, the calendar tile darkens. Nothing breaks. Tomorrow starts at zero. The point isn't perfect compliance — it's that 30 minutes is the goal you're aiming for, every day, and the visualization tells the truth either way.
No. Calls, messages, maps, banking — anything you put in your six — are free. The 30 measures only time spent outside your six. Picking your six is the meaningful decision; the rest is enforcement.
If you put them in your six: no. If you don't: yes, after 30 minutes total of using anything outside the six. If your job needs constant phone availability that can't fit in six tools, this isn't the right product.
Yes. Thirty is opt-in. There's a friction layer (device admin) that adds a confirmation step before uninstall, but the path is always there. The deal works because you said yes. It's not a prison.
Total time the screen is on, minus time spent inside Thirty's own UI, minus time spent inside your six essentials. So checking the clock doesn't count. Calling your mom doesn't count. Scrolling Instagram (not in your six) does.
Not yet. Apple doesn't allow custom launchers, which is the core mechanism. We're working on a Shortcut-based version with weaker enforcement; not soon.
Android only. Thirty is a launcher — it replaces the home screen of your phone.