Lose the doom scroll.
Your phone stays colorful. The apps you lose hours to slowly drain to gray while you scroll, and snap back to color the moment you leave. Nothing is ever blocked. Your feeds just quietly stop being worth it.
Stepped de-stimulation of the apps you choose: a color grace period, then grayscale, reversed the instant you leave. Grayscale cut measured screen time by roughly 20 to 40 minutes a day across field studies1 2 3. Nothing is blocked.
- Nothing is blocked
- Free to start
- Local-first
0
blocks
ever. The feed stays open; it just stops paying out.
by design: de-stimulation, never a lockout, so there is no wall to push against.
How it works
The first minutes are yours
The first few minutes are yours, in full color. After that the screen quietly steps down, to gray, then dimmer, while you scroll, with no prompt and no lecture. Close the app and color comes straight back.
A color grace period gives way to grayscale, then reduced luminance, at thresholds you set. Static nudges habituate, but a gradually intensifying visual friction held its effect longest in a seven-day field study (in press)7. Sessions restore on close.
Choose the apps
The feeds you lose hours to. One app is free; Plus takes them all.
The first minutes are yours
In full color, exactly as before. No prompt, no lecture.
Gray, then dimmer
The color goes first, then the glow, a step at a time while you scroll. Close the app and it all comes straight back.
Why it works: a feed that has lost its color and its glow stops pulling at you, so you stop wanting it the way you did. In the field studies behind Dwindle, phones went gray and people used them roughly 20 to 40 minutes a day less, with nothing blocked, no timer and no lecture. Try it on one app, free, and measure your own week.
Why it works: grayscale removes the color reward the feed is built on. Across field studies, grayscale cut measured screen time by roughly 20 to 40 minutes a day1 2 3, by shrinking sessions rather than pickups2, and a friction that intensifies step by step held its effect longest over a week7. Restored on close, so nothing is blocked.
Why not a blocker
Blocking picks a fight you lose
Removes the payout, not the access.
Blockers pick a fight with you, and at 11pm you win it, then binge. Dwindle never says no. It just stops paying out, so there’s no wall to push against and nothing to override.
- A blocker
- A wall at 11 pm. You climb it.
- Dwindle
- No wall. The feed pays less.
One gesture outranks everything
One triple-click of the side button brings color back for a moment that needs it, or imposes gray on an evening you already know is trouble. It’s the single human control, and it works even when everything else doesn’t.
A bidirectional accessibility triple-click grants or removes color outside every automation: override and rescue in one gesture. It is the always-available “never mind”: in the one sec trial the exit, not the barrier, was the feature that carried the effect4.
Evenings lean gray
At an hour you choose, the whole phone rests gray-first for the night, and color comes back in the morning. Evening is when the scroll is worst and you’re least inclined to fight it.
A scheduled flip turns the evening resting state gray-first across the whole phone. Reactance is lower during sleepiness, and home acts as a stabilizing context, so an evening nudge meets the least resistance6. Nothing earns color back before the morning boundary.
The evidence, honestly
This isn’t a vibe. Turning a phone gray is one of the few screen-time interventions with real field evidence behind it: measured minutes, not testimonials. for the studies themselves.
Across field studies, grayscale cut measured screen time by roughly 20 to 40 minutes a day1 2 3, shrinking sessions without changing how often people reached for the phone2. Effects differ for habitual versus deliberate use5. Still to be measured: partial intensity, the per-app version, adherence past the studies’ windows.
Get started for free. Get unlimited for a flat price.
One target app, the whole mechanism (decay, the gesture, self-repair), free. Want all your apps, the bedtime flip, and your history over time? That’s Plus, at $24.99/yr. The triple-click, the repair loop, and exporting or deleting your data are never behind a paywall.
Free: one app, full mechanism (grace, stepped decay, the gesture, repair, current-week insights). Plus: unlimited apps + scheduled flip + longitudinal insights: $24.99/yr, $3.49/mo, or $59.99 once (founding $39.99). Never paywalled: the gesture, the repair loop, data export and erase, any safety function.
- Plus
- $24.99/yr
- Unlimited apps, the bedtime flip, insights over time. Billed annually, or monthly.
- See full pricing
Lifetime $59.99 once, or $39.99 for founding users while the launch window is open.