Dwindle: Reduce Screen Time

Boundary Labs

In-app purchases

About this app

Dwindle cuts your screen time by breaking the zoned-out, where-did-the-hour-go state that feeds are built to put you in, the state researchers call dissociation, and it does it without blocking a thing: once you've scrolled too long, the app you're in loses its shine and drains to gray, and the color comes back the moment you leave.

Most screen-time apps lock you out. Dwindle does the opposite: it makes an app boring instead of forbidden.

Pick the apps that pull you in. Dwindle counts screen time in those apps only. Open one and you get a grace period in full color, short, deliberate sessions don't change. Stay longer and the color quietly starts to drain. Leave the app and everything returns to normal, instantly.

Nothing is ever blocked. There is no timer to beat, no lockout screen, no streak to protect and no lecture. The screen simply stops paying out the longer a session runs, while the rest of your phone stays completely stock.

WHY GRAYSCALE WORKS

Saturated color is a large part of what makes a feed hard to put down. Take it away and the same content is just content. It is easier to feel than to argue about, open a feed in grayscale and notice how quickly you are done with it.

Across field studies, taking the color out gives people back 20 to 40 minutes a day, not by stopping them reaching for the phone but by making sessions shorter.

The problem has always been that phone grayscale is all or nothing. Turning it on kills the color in your camera, your maps and your photos too. Dwindle makes it per-app and per-session instead.

TWO WAYS TO FADE

Dwindle works the moment you install it, using a muting lens. A soft gray wash over the app you have open. Nothing to configure.

For true system grayscale, Dwindle can unlock Android's own color filter, and walks you through it when you are ready. It always tells you which mode you are running. Either way, the rest of your phone stays in color.

SEVEN DAYS, THEN ONE PLAN

Everything Dwindle does is yours for seven days from the moment you start it, with no card and no sign-up. After that, one plan keeps it running, yearly, monthly or lifetime, at one flat price with no tiers. If you let it lapse, nothing is deleted and nothing is blocked: your apps simply return to full color until you pick a plan.

WHAT DWINDLE WILL NEVER DO

• No blocking, no lockouts, no app shields
• No account needed to install or use it
• No ads
• No mid-session pop-ups, prompts or reminders
• Your own controls always win, your phone's built-in grayscale shortcut keeps working exactly as it did

Setup asks for two permissions and explains both: usage access, so Dwindle knows which app is in front of you, and display over other apps, to draw the lens. You can stop at any step and it still works with what it has.

Boring, not forbidden.

What’s new

What's new in 1.1: your trial now has its own card on the home screen, right under the on/off switch, with the days left and a tap to see the plans; on your last day it turns terracotta so you don't miss it. Signing in for a plan bought on the web is simpler too: the code from your email goes into six boxes, and you can go back to change your email.