Most phones are designed to be opened. Senja is designed to be put down.
It replaces your home screen with something deliberately plain: the time, the date, and a handful of apps you actually use, as text, in black and white. No grid of colourful icons waiting to catch your eye. No badges, no counters, no feed. Just the few things you meant to open.
It notices when the day fills up
Senja has two homes. A quiet one, which is where it sits by default, and a full one with your usual icons. You can switch to it whenever you want, or schedule it for the hours you need it.
The unusual part: as your screen time adds up through the day, the colour quietly drains out of Senja. Not a warning, not a number, not a progress bar. You'll just notice, somewhere in the afternoon, that things have gone a little grey. By the time you've had enough, so has your phone. Everything resets overnight.
Make it harder to open the things you don't mean to open
You can add a pause before an app opens. A confirmation, a few seconds of waiting, or a prompt to type why you're reaching for it. Enough to turn a reflex back into a choice.
Set a daily limit on the apps that get away from you. Group related apps into lists, tucked a swipe away. Hide the ones you'd rather not see at all.
A quieter phone, not a locked one
Senja never stops you. Every pause can be cancelled, every limit passed if you really mean it. The point isn't to take your phone away. It's to make sure you're the one deciding.
In its quiet mode it can hush notifications, drain the colour from your whole screen, and let a double-tap put the phone to sleep. Calls and alarms always come through.
Nothing leaves your device
No account. No sign-in. No analytics, no tracking, no ads, not now and not later. Senja doesn't collect anything, so there's nothing to leak, sell, or lose. Your screen time is read by your phone and stays on your phone.
The only reason Senja touches the internet at all is Google Play billing.
Free, and free of the usual tricks
The launcher is free and fully usable: the quiet home screen, your apps as text, search, hiding, renaming, and switching modes by hand.
One optional purchase, once rather than monthly, unlocks the automatic side: schedules, usage-triggered switching, the pauses and daily limits, focus sessions, automatic grayscale, double-tap to lock, and the usage dashboard. No subscription, no trial that bills you, no nagging if you never buy it.
Permissions, plainly
Senja asks for a few things, each only when you turn on the feature that needs it, and each works without them:
• Usage access, to notice your screen time for the fade. It never leaves the device. • Do Not Disturb, to quiet notifications. Senja never reads them. • Accessibility, used only to switch grayscale on and off and to lock the screen. It doesn't read what's on your screen.
Skip any of them and Senja still works. That feature just waits.
A note on what Senja isn't
There's no weather, no news, no calendar cards, no widgets, no icon packs, no themes. Those aren't missing features. A home screen full of things to look at is the problem Senja was built to solve.
Senja means dusk. Every day winds down. Your phone should too.
A minimalist launcher whose colour fades the more you use your phone.