An interruption, not a block
SlowPulse never confiscates an app. It asks a question you have to answer on purpose, then gets out of the way — including when the answer is "yes, I'm buying it".
iOS Screen Time & Android — built by BitLion
The pause between wanting it and buying it.
A one-second pause before the apps that empty your cart and your attention span. SlowPulse raises one honest question the moment you open a guarded app — then shows you the money and the hours you kept.
Coming to iOS and Android. Free to start — one guarded app, no account required.
- to answer
- 1 tap
- to answer
- app categories
- 9
- app categories
- data sent to label a purchase
- 0
- data sent to label a purchase
9:41
SlowPulse
What problem will this purchase solve?
Amazon · 4th open today
Amount
$68.40
“saw this on my feed, kind of want it”
Suggested label
PlannedReplacementGiftImpulse
“Saw this” reads as browsing, not a need — and it's your 3rd this week.
How it works
Four steps, and only one of them is yours to do daily.
Set it up once. After that, SlowPulse only shows up at the exact moment a decision is about to be made for you.
- 01
Pick what to guard
Choose the apps that cost you — Amazon, TikTok, DoorDash, a trading app. Android matches on the app itself; iOS uses Apple's own Screen Time picker, so the selection never leaves your phone.
- 02
Get stopped at the door
Opening a guarded app raises the intervention instead of the feed. Shopping asks what problem the purchase solves. Doomscroll apps get a four-second breathing pause and today's open count. Food delivery gets the late-night version.
- 03
Answer in ten seconds
Planned, replacement, gift, or impulse — pre-picked for you by an on-device heuristic reading your note, the hour and how often you've been here this week. One tap to override it. Then you continue, or you don't.
- 04
See what you kept
Your streak, this week's spend split by label, money you decided against and an estimate of the time you didn't lose. The receipt for a decision nobody else saw you make.
What you get
A speed bump with a memory.
Blocking apps fails because you uninstall the blocker. SlowPulse works the other way around: it lets you through every time, and makes you notice that you asked.
Labels that aren't guesswork
A deterministic on-device classifier — no LLM, no upload — reads your note for intent, then falls back to time of day and this week's frequency. It suggests; you decide.
Your money, split honestly
Weekly spend broken out as planned, replacement, gift and impulse. The chart isn't a scold — it's the difference between a budget you keep and one you invent.
Nine categories of trouble
Shopping, social, food delivery, trading and gambling, video, games, dating, news. Each gets the pause it deserves, from a two-minute cooldown to the sternest one in the app.
Works with the phone off the grid
Everything is written to a local database first. Sign in and your streak and history follow you to your other devices; skip it and the app is fully functional anyway.
Time saved, stated as an estimate
Backing out of a doomscroll app credits a typical session for that category. We call it an estimate everywhere it appears, because neither platform will tell us the truth.
The taxonomy
Every category gets the pause it deserves.
A five-minute cooldown in front of a trading app and a four-second breath in front of Instagram are not the same intervention — so SlowPulse doesn't pretend they are.
Shopping
Where impulse buys happen
What problem will this solve?
Social & Doomscroll
Where minutes disappear
Four-second pause + today's opens
Food Delivery
Late-night orders you regret
What's driving this order?
Trading & Gambling
Highest stakes, sternest pause
Five-minute cooldown
Video & Streaming
“One more episode” territory
Are you sure?
Games
Sessions that outlast the plan
Are you sure?
Dating
Swiping that never quite resolves
Are you sure?
News & Outrage
Refreshing for something to be upset about
Are you sure?
Privacy
An app about restraint should show some.
SlowPulse asks about the most private thing you do on your phone. The design answer to that is to know as little as possible.
- The labeling model runs on your phone. It's a heuristic, not an LLM, and nothing is uploaded to produce a suggestion.
- There is no purchase tracking. The only amount SlowPulse knows is the one you typed in yourself.
- On iOS, Apple's Screen Time picker returns an opaque token — even Apple won't tell us which app you guarded.
- Sign-in is optional. Skip it and every row stays in a local database on your device.
Pricing
Free guards one app. Pro guards the rest of the habit.
Plans are sold in-app through the App Store and Google Play, so the price you see is your local one. SlowPulse Pro is monthly, quarterly or yearly — the longer plans carry the saving.
Free
$0forever
The whole pause, on one app.
- One guarded app
- Every intervention flavor
- On-device labeling
- Streak, weekly spend and insights
- Optional sync across devices
Pro
SlowPulse ProSubscriptionmonthly, quarterly or yearly
Guard as many apps as you want, cap what you spend per category, and make the big purchases wait.
- Unlimited guarded apps
- Custom budgets — a monthly cap per category, checked at the moment of purchase
- Cooling-off periods — anything over your threshold waits, and we remind you when it's up
- Price watch — park what you talked yourself out of and come back to it on purpose
Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled, and can be managed or cancelled from your store account at any time. Free covers one guarded app with no account and no time limit.
FAQ
The questions people actually ask.
Does SlowPulse see what I buy?
No. There's no purchase tracking, no receipt parsing and no store integration. The only amount SlowPulse knows is the one you type into an intervention yourself, and the label is your answer to a question.
How does it know I opened an app?
On Android, an Accessibility Service watches for the guarded package coming to the foreground. On iOS it's Apple's Screen Time framework, which hands the app an opaque token — Apple deliberately doesn't tell third parties which app you picked, and SlowPulse doesn't need to know.
Is the labeling AI?
Not in the sense that word usually means. It's a deterministic heuristic that runs entirely on your phone: keyword intent in your note first, then time of day and how often you've opened this app this week. Nothing is sent anywhere to produce it, and every suggestion is one tap from being overridden.
Can I still open the app?
Always. SlowPulse is a speed bump, not a lock. The point is that continuing becomes a decision you made rather than a reflex you had — and the app records both answers the same way.
Do I have to make an account?
No. Sign-in is optional and exists only to sync your streak and history across devices. Skip it and everything is stored locally on your phone.
What happens to my streak if I proceed?
Proceeding isn't a failure — it's data. The insights screen counts what you decided against as money saved, and if you later buy something you'd put on hold, SlowPulse rewrites the original event rather than letting that number quietly only ever go up.
One second now, or the receipt later.
Guard your worst app for free. Keep the answer you gave — and the money you didn't spend.