AwareThumb: Stop Doomscrolling

AwareThumb

In-app purchases

About this app

Caught in the scroll again? AwareThumb helps you stop doomscrolling YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels without blocking apps. Before each short video it shows a calm, few-second pause, so you watch by choice, not by habit.

Most screen time apps and Shorts blockers fight you with hard limits, timers and lockouts – and you end up deleting them. AwareThumb works the other way: no limits, no guilt, no judging what you watch. Just a moment to ask yourself "do I really want this?". Less mindless scrolling, more time for what matters: focus, sleep, study, work or people around you.

HOW IT WORKS
• A pause before the feed – the checkpoint appears when you enter Shorts or Reels, and again on each new video.
• You decide – "Allow this once", "Don't ask again for 10 minutes" or "Don't ask again today".
• Go back at any time – closes the checkpoint and returns to the previous screen.
• Choose the pause: 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 seconds.
• Separate switches for YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

Want to watch? Watch. AwareThumb sets no time limits and never judges what you watch.

GOOD FOR
• breaking the short-form video habit and the dopamine loop of endless feeds
• cutting screen time without a strict app blocker
• digital wellbeing, digital minimalism and a gentle dopamine detox
• staying focused while studying or working

PRIVACY
AwareThumb runs entirely on your phone. No account, no server, no ads, no analytics and no watch history.

ACCESSIBILITY SERVICE API – HOW AND WHY AWARETHUMB USES IT
AwareThumb's core feature works through Android's AccessibilityService API. Without it, the app cannot work. The service is used only to:
• detect when you open YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, and when a new video starts,
• show the pause screen on top of the video,
• take you back to the previous screen when you tap "Go back".

What the service reads: only which app is on screen and, inside YouTube and Instagram, the layout of the screen (element IDs and positions). It never reads any text – no video titles, comments, messages, passwords or anything you type.

What the service does not do: it does not collect, store or send any data, does not change your settings, and does not stop you from turning it off or uninstalling AwareThumb.

Before you turn it on, AwareThumb shows a screen explaining all of this and asks for your consent. You enable the service yourself in Android Settings > Accessibility and can disable it there at any time.

AwareThumb is not an accessibility tool for people with disabilities. It uses the AccessibilityService API only for the features described above.

SUBSCRIPTION
The first 14 days are free. After that, AwareThumb is a monthly or yearly subscription at the price shown in Google Play, renewing automatically until you cancel in Google Play. Cancel before the trial ends and you pay nothing.

What’s new

Stability improvements and minor fixes.