When your thumb opens social media, it finds an idea instead.

Snub Phone locks the apps you choose until the time you set. Open one anyway and you get one thing to do instead, with your kids, your partner or on your own.

Snub Phone

A hand holds an iPhone up out of the clouds. At 4:21 the screen shows an idea: Be a ship. (AI-generated illustration)

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Snub Phone for iPhone and Android isn't out yet. It will be free: no subscription, no in-app purchases.

phubbing noun

Snubbing the people you're with by looking at your phone.

Snub Phone helps you put the phone down and stop phubbing the people in the room.

Evening, a lamp on: a man and a woman sit at the two ends of a sofa, each lit by their own phone. (AI-generated illustration)

9:00 PM
The two of you, finally.
Dishes done. The sofa is yours.
9:05 PM
Two phones. Two feeds. One sofa.
Someone says something. Nobody hears it.
10:40 PM
“Night.”
You spent the evening next to each other, not with each other.

Snub Phone locks the apps you choose from 8:00 to 11:00 PM. Set it up on both phones. Open one anyway and you get an idea for two instead.

How it works

1Choose the apps and the time
Pick who you're with and until when. Only the apps you choose are locked.
2Open one anyway
Every app you lock shows the same idea instead. To stop early, you type a reason and wait 60 seconds.
38:00 PM. Your apps are back.
Your apps are back. There's no streak to keep. The session ends on its own. After work, with kids, starts again at 4:00 PM on the next weekday.

One thing to do instead

Ideas for an evening for two.

For parentsFor couplesSolo

Ask a first-date question.
Ask each other something you'd ask on a first date, and answer as if you'd just met.
Trade back rubs.
Ten minutes each. Set the timer on the oven, not on the phone.
Play one board game.
Pick the one you haven't opened in ages. Loser does the dishes.
Plan a trip on paper.
Pick a place you'd both like to see and plan three days there with a pen. No booking tonight.
Be a ship.
Lie on the floor and let the kids sit on you. Steer around storms and icebergs together.
Lie down on the rug.
You're a mountain. Let them climb you.
Tape an obstacle course.
Painter's tape on the floor: shapes to jump into, lines to jump over, spots to run around. Run it with them, then hand them the tape.
Kids barefoot. Painter's tape only, so it peels off the floor.
Red, green, squat.
Laps around the house. You call it: red, everyone freezes; green, everyone runs. Move on red, do one squat.
Kids barefoot.
Walk a street you've never walked.
Pick one within twenty minutes of home and go. Look up.
Make a slow breakfast.
Cook it properly and eat it at the table, not standing up.
Fix one thing.
The squeaky door, the loose hinge, the missing button. Just one.
Stretch till the credits.
Hamstrings first, then shoulders.