Interesting idea: Ukrainian app Intenty can reduce your smartphone usage time

Noticing your smartphone addiction? Constantly looking at the screen , even if you are not going to do anything? There is a great solution from a Ukrainian developer called Intenty.

How it works

Purposeful phone use is a complex habit that is difficult to develop. Operating systems and social networks have timers, prompts, and controls over app or platform usage. But what if you just mindlessly unlock your phone out of habit, only to end up doing nothing, turning the screen off, and turning it back on a few minutes later? To get rid of this habit, Ukrainian developer Yaroslav Neznaradko created the Intenty app, which every time you unlock your phone, prompts you to name a reason or perform a certain action, for example, inhale or stretch, reports 24 Kanal with reference to TechCrunch.

Yaroslav Neznaradko started thinking about this problem in 2019, when he spent a lot of time on his phone.

I found myself checking my phone too often (email, social media, news). I tried screen time limits, focus modes, and app locks, but they were more frustrating than helpful. And I had an idea. What if before using my phone, I had to formulate and evaluate my intention? – says the developer.

That's where it all started. To test the concept, he first tried writing down his intentions in a notebook every time he picked up his phone. And suddenly it worked.

The first version of the app was ready for Android in 2020, but it had only one function – asking users questions about why they were unlocking their devices. The iOS version faced difficulties because, according to the author, this platform has many limitations.

The project did not develop for a while, but in 2023, Neznaradko rebranded the service, renaming it Intenty. He decided to focus on the Android version. At the time, he says, ChatGPT was still a novelty, and inspired him to use a similar design concept. This is how the chat interface came about: the app asked people about their intentions for using the device in a dialog when they unlocked the phone. But users didn't like it.

What the app with chat interaction looked like: video

After researching human-computer interaction, Neznaradko released an updated version this summer that allows users to customize the prompts. You can choose prompts from several categories, such as Intention, Necessity, Grounding, Posture, and Minimalism. All these categories have different number of hints and you can also add a new category or hint.

• In order not to enter the reason, you can slide your finger on the prompt screen, but then the point of using the program is lost.
• You can set a reboot time so that the prompt does not appear immediately after you lock the phone if you are waiting for someone to answer.
• You can also adjust the intensity of the tooltips by setting them to appear every 2nd, 3rd, 5th, or 10th unlock.

 

• The app also shows the history of your answer logs and the number of times you have unlocked your phone over a period of time.

Intenty is free, but you can pay $1.99 a month to unlock a tap schedule, a hard mode that forces you to enter a reason, and a lock button to lock your phone from the tap screen.

The developer is currently working on a reminder or pop-up window when using the phone for a long time. It also explores a way to combat prompt fatigue and automatically update the content of those prompts.