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. Find a different tool. 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. An app 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. Phone calls and standard SMS are exempt from the count. Everything else does count — including the apps you put in your six. The point is that calls and messages are conversation, with another human on the other end deciding when it ends. Tools (maps, wallet, camera) are time you control, and that time is what 30 minutes is measuring.
If you put them in your six: no — they stay reachable from your home screen. If you don't: yes, they're blocked from the start. Reaching them requires tapping "request unlock," waiting 20 minutes, then you get 15 minutes of full access before it locks again. The 30-minute daily count is a separate measurement of total phone use, not an access threshold.
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 inside Thirty's own UI, minus time spent in calls or standard SMS. So checking the clock doesn't count (screen never unlocked). Calling your mom doesn't count. Scrolling Instagram counts. Browsing maps for half an hour counts. Using your banking app counts. The 30 measures all that, totalled.
Not yet. Apple doesn't allow apps to replace the home screen, which is the core mechanism. We're working on a Shortcut-based version with weaker enforcement; not soon.
Android only. Thirty replaces your phone's home screen — that's how it hides the apps.