Launched this week
Orbit
Stop doomscrolling. Earn every app unlock.
342 followers
Stop doomscrolling. Earn every app unlock.
342 followers
Doomscrolling is free. Orbit makes it cost something. Pick a schedule and your apps lock themselves. Want back in early? Earn it: hold the orb, do squats, ask a friend, pay a little more each time, or win a shift at The Gate. Most times, you’ll stay out.
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Hey Product Hunt 👋
I’m Alara, one of the builders and the head marketer of Orbit!
Last month, my Screen Time report said 10h 19m a day. More than 80% of it was doomscrolling. I was a full-on blue light zombie: in bed at 1 AM, saying “just one more video,” waking up tired. Finally I asked myself, what am I doing with my life??
I tried every digital detox trick. Deleting apps only to reinstall them in the next hour 😅. Grayscale mode. A “dopamine detox” weekend. Strict blockers I learned to bypass in two taps.
That last one showed us the real problem: getting back in was free. One tap and I was scrolling again. So we built Orbit around one idea: every unlock should cost you something.
🔒 Pick a schedule (No scroll till evening, Deep work mornings, Sleep) and your apps lock on their own
🏋️ Still want in? Earn it:
• Hold the orb and breathe
• Do squats in front of the camera, or play a head-movement game
• Ask a friend. Your accountability partner gets the request and says yes or no
• Pay: $0.99, then $1.99, up to $9.99 that week. Or send it to a nonprofit instead
• Work a night shift at The Gate Inc.: judge 8 residents’ requests to go online. Make 2 mistakes or fewer, and you earn your break. Only 3 shifts a day, so the game never becomes the new feed (My personal favorite)
👯 Together: lock a whole group’s phones at once, for dinner, a study night or a trip
A month later: 10h 19m → 6h 14m a day. My social media time? Cut in half. No phone in bed means no blue light before sleep, and I sleep noticeably better.
The research points the same way:
• 1 in 9 teens across 44 countries now show signs of social media addiction, up from 1 in 14 in 2018 (WHO/HBSC)
• In a 2025 randomized trial, blocking mobile internet for just 2 weeks improved attention, mental health and well-being; over 90% of participants improved on at least one (PNAS Nexus)
This math is making me scared: at 10 hours a day, the next decade would have cost me 4+ years of waking life.
I’d love to know: what would stop you faster: 20 squats, asking your mom, or $9.99? 😅
Feel free to use 20% discounts special for this launch:
20% OFF on annual plan PHA20
20% OFF on lifetime plan PHL20
Honest answer to your question: paying would stop me fastest. The tricky part for me is that half my scrolling is actually work, since I run Instagram for two brands. Does the "What for?" prompt let you save a reason like "replying to DMs," so work sessions don't eat into the limit?
@kaitlyn_bricker Ha, paying wins again 😅 And you've hit on something real: for people who run social for work, the feed is also the office, and for me too. Honest answer: not yet. "What for?" has fixed options today ("Reply to someone" opens just that one app for 2 minutes, "Check one thing" for 1), and 2 minutes is clearly not a work session. What works better for your case: Orbit runs on schedules, not a daily limit, so you can lock Instagram only outside your work blocks (evenings, mornings, bed) and leave work hours open. Some social media managers also keep Instagram locked and answer DMs from Meta Business Suite, a separate app you'd simply not add to the lock. A saved "work" reason is a really good idea though, and I'm taking it to the team.
@kaitlyn_bricker That’s a fair point, especially when Instagram is part of your job! Orbit doesn’t use a time allowance that work sessions eat into. During a blocking schedule, you still need to complete your chosen challenge, regardless of why you’re opening the app. You can create multiple schedules to work around your usual work hours.
Separating work sessions from casual scrolling in the reports is a great suggestion. We’d be cautious about letting a saved reason bypass the block entirely, though, since it could become an easy loophole, even with the best intentions 😅
Nice idea and much needed for us all nowadays.
Question: a lot of these apps are needed for tasks that are not doomscrolling (e.g. replying a to a friend's message) -> is there a way/thought on how you can account for that? e.g. something like detect on the app when the attention drifts from 'real tasks' to 'doom scrolling'?
@vyas_raina Thank you! And yes, that's exactly the problem we kept running into: the same app is a tool one minute and a feed the next. Detecting the drift automatically isn't possible on iPhone, and honestly we're glad: Apple's Screen Time framework never lets an app like Orbit see what you do inside another app, so nothing reads your screen or your messages. So we flipped it around: instead of detecting the drift, Orbit asks before it starts. Tap a locked app and the bouncer asks "What for?" Pick "Reply to someone" and only that one app opens for 2 minutes, then it locks again by itself. "Check one thing" gets 1 minute.
Alara, I’ve tried Opal and Focus to reduce my screen time. Opal helped initially, but once I learned how to interrupt its sessions, the restrictions lost their meaning for me. I also wanted my iPhone to switch to grayscale automatically throughout the day, but never got the automation working, so I never implemented it.
How are you thinking about people eventually learning to work around Orbit’s restrictions? I wonder how you help that pause become a habit of actually considering why you’re opening an app, before tapping through it becomes the habit instead. Have you seen that shift happen with people using Orbit?
@zandy_moyo This is the question we think about most, so thank you for asking it so honestly. The honest part first: you can always work around any iPhone blocker, because iOS always lets you turn off Screen Time access. So we don't try to build a prison. We try to make the pause hard to get used to. Research says that's the right fight: tools that are easy to dismiss stop working, which is exactly what the EU Commission said about TikTok's own screen-time tools this year.
A few things in Orbit are built for that:
• The cost can grow. With "Harder each attempt," every unlock that week adds a little more (more spotlights, more squats), so tapping through never becomes free.
• It can ask before it lets you choose. "Ask what for, first" puts the bouncer on the cover: "Purpose of visit?" You have to name a reason before you get a way in.
• Some costs can't be tapped through. A friend's approval is a real person saying yes or not now, and that never turns into muscle memory.
• The words are yours. Write Back lets you write the line that shows every time you reach for a locked app, and your own sentence is harder to ignore than ours.
The shift you're describing is what the research looks for: in one 6-week study, a short pause before opening an app led people to make 37% fewer attempts over time (Grüning et al., PNAS 2023). The habit changed before the tap, not just at it.
Is this app good for teens? You mention some stats on that, and would love to somehow get my tween on board. But how to motivate him with this app?
@lhenleycohn Love that you're thinking about it together rather than for him. 🙂 Honest answer: Orbit is built for self-control, not parental control. He'd set his own locks, and like any iPhone blocker, it only works if he wants it to. If you need limits he can't change, iPhone's own Screen Time with Family Sharing is the right tool. Where Orbit can really help is getting him to want it:
• Do it together. Start a Together moment at dinner: every phone at the table locks, yours included. Kids notice fast when the rule is for everyone.
• Be his partner. He asks you for a break and you say yes or not now. You only see the minutes and the reason, never his apps or what he does. Being a partner is free.
• Let him pick the cost. The night shift game is a big hit with people who'd never pick squats. 😄
What does he scroll most, games or videos?
Hi everyone
I’m Orhan, one of the builders of Orbit.
The part I’m most proud of is something you barely notice: the moment you tap a locked app. Instead of a dead end, Orbit asks “What for?“. Need to reply to someone? You get 2 minutes, and only for that one app. Just want to scroll? That’s when you have to earn it.
A few design choices we made along the way:
The Gate (our mini game) only allows 3 shifts a day, so the game can’t become the new feed
Pay to unlock caps at $9.99 and resets every Monday, so it motivates instead of punishing
Your friend never sees which apps you use, only the minutes and your reason
Happy to answer anything about how Orbit works or why we built it this way. Which unlock would actually stop you?
@oistenhickorkmaz
Interesting , how does it track success , thats still an manual effort?
@nitinvinay Good question, and no, it's all automatic. Orbit keeps track of its own schedules for you: which lock windows ran to the end without a break, your day streak and best streak, and how many breaks you took (and on which days). Every week you get a short report. I hope I answered your question properly 🤓
@nitinvinay Good question! Orbit tracks this automatically and gives you a weekly report showing how often you tried to open a locked app and how often you chose not to continue. You can view your progress and share the report if you’d like.
The group lock for dinner is a fun idea. Can everyone choose which apps to block, or does the whole group use the same settings?
@marianna_tymchuk A bit of both! Everyone keeps their own apps: each phone locks every app from its owner's own Orbit schedules, even ones that aren't running right now. So you lock your Instagram and your dad locks his news app, and before you join you see exactly what will lock on your phone. The host sets what's shared: what it's for (say "family dinner"), how long it lasts, and the one challenge anyone has to do for a 3-minute pause (a hold or the head game), same for everyone, host included. Nobody sees anyone else's apps. At the end everyone just sees "4 of 4, to the end," plus who took a pause. Who would be the first to ask for a pause at your table? 😄