Your phone knows you too well. It knows that when you’re bored, stressed, or procrastinating, your thumb will automatically tap Instagram, TikTok, or whatever app feeds your dopamine addiction. The funny part is that we often do not consciously decide to open these apps. It is all muscle memory.
But what if something interrupted that autopilot behavior right at the moment you needed it most? That’s exactly what one sec does, distinguishing itself from other apps to help you cut down your smartphone usage.
- OS
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Android & iOS
- Price model
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Free (in-app puchases available)
One sec adds a tiny pause before you open distracting apps, giving you just enough space to break out of autopilot. It helps you stay intentional with your screen time using gentle, customizable interruptions.
One sec forces you to pause before mindlessly opening apps
A gentle “Are you sure?”
One sec is designed to interrupt the automatic behavior that leads to endless scrolling. It stands out among apps to slow down your mindless scrolling by intercepting your action and forcing you to complete a breathing exercise.
After downloading one sec from the Play Store, open it and tap “Set up now (takes 2 minutes)” to begin a guided configuration that walks you through the required permissions. First up is the Accessibility Permission, which one sec needs to detect when you’re opening target apps and display its intervention screen. When you tap Continue, you’re shown the standard accessibility permission dialog, which explains that one sec needs to view and control your screen and perform actions on your behalf. Tap Allow to proceed.
Next comes the App Usage Permission, which lets one sec recognize when you open selected apps so it can trigger a mindful pause. Once you grant it, you’ll see a confirmation screen letting you know everything is set up. From there, you can choose your first app to configure.
Tap Select Your First App, and you’ll see a neatly organized list of common time-sinks. Under Social Media, you’ll find Reddit, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Facebook—each showing 0h 0m of usage since you just installed the app. If you are looking for how to do a social media detox, this is where you start. Beneath that, Other apps include all other apps installed on your phone. Pick the app you struggle with most—say, Instagram in my own case—by tapping the circle next to it, then hit Done.
You’ll get a cheerful party-horn animation confirming that one sec is now active for Instagram, followed by instructions to return to your home screen and try opening it again. When you tap Instagram, it doesn’t launch right away. Instead, a dark screen appears with the message, “It’s time to take a deep breath…” A gradient bar at the bottom begins a short breathing exercise, usually around ten seconds, giving your conscious mind a moment to interrupt your muscle memory.
Once the exercise ends, you’re shown a screen with two simple choices: I don’t want to open Instagram or Continue to Instagram. This is the heart of one sec’s design. It never locks you out—it just asks you to decide. If you choose to continue, the app also shows how many times you’ve attempted to open Instagram in the past 24 hours, adding gentle awareness without feeling judgmental.
You can customize interventions and track your progress over time
You can tweak everything
Inside the one sec app, you have a number of customization tools. Head to the Customize tab in the bottom-right corner, and you’ll find a section called Intervention Boosters. Here, you can change the default breathing prompt (“It’s time to take a deep breath…”) to something more personal, adjust the length of the breathing exercise, and tweak the Intentional app switching delay, which controls how long you have to pause before jumping into another app.
One of the smartest features is Re-Intervention. Instead of letting you slip back into doom-scrolling after one successful intervention, one sec can prompt you again after you’ve been in the app for a set amount of time. Each app can have its own re-intervention rule, which makes the feature effective at breaking long scrolling sessions.
I made my phone dumb and finally broke my screen-time habit
Switching to a dumb phone wasn’t practical, so I did the next best thing.
If you want even tighter control, Remove In-App Distractions goes a step further by letting you block specific sections within apps. On Instagram, you can block Reels and Stories. You can disable Shorts on YouTube. Snapchat lets you block Spotlight. WhatsApp lets you block Updates. It’s a targeted way to eliminate the most addictive parts of each platform while still letting you use the core features you actually need—messaging, posting, checking updates—without falling into endless scroll traps.
The Statistics tab gives you a clear picture of how much time you’re spending on the apps you’ve configured. You’ll see your daily average, plus a week-over-week comparison that surfaces helpful context. A daily breakdown chart also highlights when you’re most likely to slip into mindless scrolling—maybe Friday nights, or your Monday morning commute.
You can also see how many times you tried to open each app and whether you backed out or pushed through the intervention. All of this data stays on your device. There’s no cloud syncing, no account requirement, and no profiling. If you want multi-device access, you can enable optional iCloud sync through your private container, but the information always remains fully under your control.
The pro upgrade is there, but you may not need it yet
One limitation worth noting is that the free version of one sec only lets you configure a single app. If you try to add more, you’ll see a prompt encouraging you to upgrade to one sec pro for unlimited apps. For most people, starting with their biggest distraction is enough to build awareness and start breaking the habit. Once you get a handle on that, you can decide whether it’s worth upgrading to cover the rest.
There’s also a desktop browser extension you can download from the one sec website that delivers the same intervention experience on your computer. It’s a smart addition—many people who cut down on phone use end up shifting that mindless scrolling to their browser instead. If you want to go even further in creating a focused environment, you can explore additional browsing habits to help you stay focused on your computer.