You pick up the iPhone to read the next chapter of a manga. A minute later a feed is open, and the chapter is still where you left it.
I made It's My Time, an iPhone app, for that minute. It shows a list you wrote yourself, one item at a time, in the moment before an app you chose opens. The list holds the things you would do when you have time, if you remembered them when the time came.
The screen and its two buttons
When I meant to take a break and ended up back at work, or in a short-video feed I had no wish to watch, one of two things had happened. Either I could not remember what I had wanted to do, or I remembered and could not move. The second was more common.
The app does the same thing in both cases. You write down the things you want to do when you have time. You choose the apps you tend to open on autopilot. From then on, when you open one of those apps, a dark screen comes up first with one thing from your list and two buttons. GO marks it done and closes the app you were opening. Open lets the app open as usual for fifteen minutes (thirty or sixty if you prefer), and then the screen comes back.
That is the whole app. It makes no difference which app you were opening or what time it is.
Why the Open button is always there
It's My Time does not lock anything. It puts one suggestion in front of you and lets you decide, in the second you look at the screen, between the app you tapped on reflex and the thing you wrote down earlier with a clear head.
A block is something you work around or turn off, and once it is off it does nothing. A suggestion you can decline is still there the next time you open the app.
You choose which apps bring up the screen
The apps that bring up the screen are the ones you pick in Apple's app picker, one by one or by category. Social media is the usual pick, and the app's own description says so, but It's My Time does not single it out. For some people a feed is one of the things they want to do, and then it belongs on the list. What goes on the other side is whatever you open when you did not mean to.
What counts as something you want to do
My own definition is wide. A thing I want to do is anything I would keep doing if energy, time and willpower were unlimited. For me that includes manga and guitar, and also the gym and supplements. I skip them the same way.
So the list takes anything. An item needs a name and nothing else. If you add a note, its first line shows on the screen too, so "chapter 42" or "legs day" is there when the screen comes up. If you add a link, it opens when you mark the item done on the board, and after a GO on the suggestion screen a notification offers to open it.
The board
An early version showed the list as rows with round checkboxes. It looked like a to-do list, which is the wrong feeling for things you want to do.
Now the list is a board of tiles on black. Tap a tile when you have done the thing and it lights up orange; tap again to undo. Each tile has a level that rises with the number of times you have marked it done, and it stays put on days you skip. When every tile is lit, the day reads CLEAR, and the count of CLEAR days sits at the top of the board. The day turns over at 4 a.m., so a chapter read at one in the morning still counts for the evening it belongs to.
The look is black and a vivid orange, with heavy slanted numerals and a row of slanted ticks for the day's progress. It is meant to feel closer to a game than to a planner.
Two settings went away during development: a weight for each item, and a margin for how much time it needs. Each needed explaining before it made sense, and that kind of setup is a chore, so they went.
Where the screen comes from
The screen that interrupts the app is Apple's Screen Time, the same system behind app limits, with It's My Time filling in the words and the two buttons. You grant the permission yourself, for your own iPhone, and the screen appears only for the apps you picked. Your list and your choice of apps stay on the iPhone.
If you would rather not use Screen Time, Settings has another way: a Shortcuts automation that opens It's My Time when a chosen app opens. It takes a few more steps to set up, which is why it is the second option.
Some evenings Open wins
The app allows that, and the list is still there at the next tap. What changes is one moment: between the tap and the feed, the thing you wrote down earlier is on the screen. How often that is enough will depend on the evening.