My wife and I have developed a mobile app, BreakFree, to track your smartphone addiction. Its an app that sits in the background and does all the heavy lifting of capturing your phone unlocks, time spent on the phone, calls made, calls received, apps launched, time spent on apps… you get the point. All this data is translated to an addiction score. This score forms the crux of app.
Our main goal with this app was to help the user realize how addicted he is to his phone, and we do this by sending out notifications at set thresholds such as, if the addiction score moves into the yellow or red zone, or if the user has used his phone for over an hour, or if he has launched a particular app for more that 15 times in a day, etc. The user can always launch the app to get more details.
Once the user has realized his addiction level, we expect him to use the tools provided in the app to help him cut down his phone dependency.
All in all BreakFree is a complete package to help you realize and reduce your phone dependency.
The app is available for free on the Android Play store and we are planning to launch an IOS version soon. We would really like to know what you think of the app, and if you are on Android please do give it a try.
Looks interesting! Can I get statistics across multiple devices (so I can’t cheat by alternating between using my phone and my tablet :-), and can I export the data (so I can answer questions like “am I more distracted when I get less sleep”)?
Ah… you mean have a login which then tracks a combined score on multiple devices. No, but thats a great idea, we will surely be thinking on those lines in the future.
The app being in its nascent stage, we are not really sure to what level to detail would people be interested in their addiction data, at present we have chosen a more non-serious approach to reminding them of their addiction. That by no means is less data, just that the whole theme of the app is to bring a smile on the users faces (think Nike Fuel Band App). If the users do show an interest in analyzing their addiction data, we will surely add an export feature.
I don’t find an addition score very useful. On the other hand I appreciate to have the data about how I use my phone and when I use it in my Google calender. At the moment it’s only calls and I would appreciate more data.
I bought the pro version of the app and while the addiction level info is interesting I’m more interested in tracking my app usage over time. Currently all it only offers app usage for the current day and it’s not tracked over time. Other activities tracked over time and not just current day would be great as well. I’d love to see that ability added. Bonus points for allowing exporting of that data. Also as mentioned by someone else take a look at https://www.rescuetime.com/ which provides computer usage logging.