Squirrel puts a price on the apps you open too much. Tap Instagram and you get a hard block, not a screen you can wave away. Want to check a DM? That's fine, but you have to open Squirrel, pick how long, and set aside a few dollars for yourself first. No money moves through the app. No card or bank account to connect. When you're ready, invest it in your own brokerage and tell Squirrel what you bought. It tracks your holdings with live prices.
What's great
Putting an actual dollar amount on opening a distracting app is a smarter nudge than a plain screen-time count-up - a number that just goes up is easy to ignore, but watching money get set aside every time you unlock Instagram makes the cost feel real in the moment, not just in a weekly report.
What needs improvement
Would like to see the saved-up money actually go somewhere useful automatically (a goal, a linked savings account) instead of just sitting as a number in the app - right now the "invest the money you'd have spent scrolling" pitch is more of a mental framing than something the app does for you.
vs Alternatives
Opal: Screen Time ControlOpal is more of a hard schedule/block tool. Squirrel's angle is a financial cost rather than a wall, which felt like it'd survive the "just this once" moment better since you're trading your own money, not fighting a lock screen.
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So does it use the user's money to regulate / manage his smartphone behaviour?
First, I thought that someone would pay me. 😁
@busmark_w_nika Sort of! You set your own toll for unlocking an app, but the money stays yours. Squirrel just tracks what you’ve set aside, then you invest it yourself later.
I wish people were paying me to open Instagram though 😂
@brichall But it has subscription model or? :D
@busmark_w_nika Yep! The blocker and savings history are free. The paid part is the portfolio tracking/live prices, which is $8.99/year or $19.99 lifetime :)
Nice idea, personally I dug out my Gameboy Advance, whenever the urge to scroll hits, I play Pokemon or Mario Bros instead, and honestly it feels satisfying to do something I'll actually remember instead of just mindless scroll dumps haha
@lambertlcdb I love that. The Gameboy is awesome. I wish that was me. Usually I’ll open one of my doomscrolling apps and start scrolling before I even realize I had the urge. Such a weird feeling when you finally snap out of it and realize how long you’ve been doing it.
I really like the idea of putting something between you and doomscrolling. But, I don’t really believe time = money. What if the currency was time itself? If you’re a musician and spend an hour scrolling instead of creating, you owe your music an hour. Not because you can get that hour back. Just to make you think about where the next one goes.
@oykutopaloglu Fair. I don’t really think time = money either, but the money made the consequence feel real for me. I also liked that it connected two problems a lot of people my age have: too much screen time and not investing enough.
@charlie_titherley Yep, that was my issue too. There’s no “just this once” button on the blocked app. If you want back in, you have to leave it, open Squirrel, pick how long you want, and choose what you’re setting aside. So you can still unlock it, but you can’t just mindlessly tap through the block.
You can always remove an app from your blocked list in Squirrel if you decide you don’t want it blocked anymore.