Actuflow - app that reminds you to be intentional with your phone usage.
https://acture.app
Shows you pop up window after phone unlock with intention form on Android, after app opening(using shortcuts) on iOS.
Main features were implemented.
Redesign and a lot of additional features are arriving.
https://twitter.com/actuflow
Offline, free, no-ads, considering to open source.
I agree that the identification of internal distractions is important for somebody who wants to be less distracted.
It was easy for me to get distracted to my smartphone, even without notification until I started tracking and thinking about every interaction with it. And I can confirm that when you know the root cause you can prevent it or handle it somehow.
It may sound self-promotional but nevertheless. I created an app(https://acture.app) for tracking smartphone usage intentions for myself. And it really helped me to deal with smartphone overuse(I still overuse on my laptop but that's another history). Every time when I would like to use my phone I make a pause and think about the intention and validating it before using. I was writing this intention right into the app which popup with input form after every unlock(pop up is only on Android, on iOS user have to manually go to the app). I found several usage patterns in my usages and then I created plans for every pattern "How to deal with it". And I don't need to delete all apps from my phone to use my smartphone less, instead, it's a chance to investigate how do I use it and then adapt and get best from these apps. In other words, I created a habit to think and validate my every phone usage intention. E.G it's morning and I picked up my smartphone and I would like to check some tweets and then I got a pop-up window that reminded me to think about my intention and write intention and then I realized that it's morning better to prepare some coffee and go through my morning routine.
Then I shared this app and looks like for some people it works. There is no magic app or one concrete approach on how to identify these triggers. I think it's more about self-monitoring and your desire to change it.
I don’t know if this would work on iOS (or if it’s already implemented), but any idea if I can make the app pop up directly every time I unlock the phone? This would mean that I don’t need open the app manually myself /keep the app on top before I lock the screen.
It's not possible to overlay apps after unlocking on iOS.
But I found a way how to change UX to fulfil that. All intentions should be marked as failed or successful after finishing, so the user should back to the app before phone lock. So by locking your phone in the app, you will not forget about filling intention next time.
That's the only allowed way I found for iOS. There is a way how to show your app immediately after unlock, but it requires using private API that is not allowed by the App Store.
