Free, forever. No hardware. No tracking.
An AR-powered physical barrier for your most distracting apps.
Point your camera at a poster, polaroid, or fridge magnet you already own — that's the key.
Our mission
Your attention is yours. Tech companies spend billions engineering apps to hijack your dopamine system, and other companies want to charge you $40 for a piece of plastic to get it back.
We believe taking back control of your screen time should be free, accessible, and private.
Fokusd is a non-profit tool built to help you break the doomscrolling loop — without selling you hardware or harvesting your data.
Almost anything works
A poster on your wall. A photo on your shelf. A magnet on your fridge. A book on your nightstand. Fokusd works with almost any printed image — pick something meaningful, or just convenient.
The mechanism
Pick the apps you want to block using native iOS Screen Time. Instagram, TikTok, X, the lot.
Use your camera to set a physical object — a poster, a photo, a fridge magnet — as your key.
Get up, walk over, and scan that exact object to unlock your apps. That walk is the entire product.
The science of friction
Fokusd isn't just an app blocker. It's built on proven behavioral science models that explain why digital habits are so hard to break — and how to finally beat them.
The Fogg Behavior Model, developed by Dr. BJ Fogg at Stanford University.
Any behavior requires three things: Motivation, Prompt, and Ability. Traditional app limits rely entirely on your Motivation — willpower — which easily depletes when you're tired or stressed.
Fokusd works by drastically reducing your Ability. By turning a one-second thumb tap into a fifteen-second physical task, the bad habit becomes inconvenient to execute.
System 1 / System 2 — Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences.
Our brains rely on fast, unconscious "System 1" thinking for habits like doomscrolling. Because digital limits only require a single tap to bypass, they don't snap you out of that state.
Fokusd forces you to stand up and scan an object — shifting your brain into "System 2": conscious, deliberate decision-making.
Recent studies on digital well-being interventions.
Purely digital interventions — screen timers, weekly reports — often fail because they lack real-world consequences. "Physical opt-out strategies" are highly effective at reducing impulsive checking.
The physical distance acts as a circuit breaker for your dopamine loop. Long enough for the urge to pass; short enough to feel reasonable.
Core features
01 — Hardware
Powered entirely by AR and the objects already in your home. No keychain, no plastic, no shipping fees.
02 — Privacy
All data stays on your device. No tracking. No analytics. No "anonymized" telemetry. Nothing leaves your phone.
03 — Interface
A clean interface designed for focus, not monetization. The app blocking your apps shouldn't be running ads.
04 — Price
No paywalls, no subscriptions, no premium tiers. The whole app. Forever. For everyone.
A letter from the developer
I originally built Fokusd as a portfolio piece after losing my job. At the time, my own screen time was completely out of control and dragging my daily routine down. I loved the concept of physical app-blockers, but I couldn't justify paying $40 for a piece of plastic hardware. So, I built an AR version for myself.
It worked so well that I shared it with a few friends. They loved it too. Even after I found a new job, I kept polishing the app in my spare time because I realized how much it was helping us.
People keep asking what the catch is. There isn't one. I don't want to build a massive startup or push expensive hardware. I believe everyone deserves a tool to fight phone addiction, and it shouldn't cost money. That's why Fokusd has no ads, no subscriptions, and no data tracking.
I built it to help myself, I shared it with my friends, and now I'm sharing it with you.
— Paweł
Requires iOS 18 or later. Free, with no in-app purchases.
