A calmer phone
Your phone was built to be bottomless. Your day doesn't have to be.
Every other tool is a switch you flip off and back on. Ration is different — a daily budget of screen time that drains only as you use it, then rests until tomorrow.
So every time you reach for your phone, you ask one question: is this worth my minutes? Do that for long enough and the habit isn't in the app any more — it's in you.
No accounts. No tracking. Nothing leaves your phone.
you spend in sessions.
Distracting apps stay blocked by default. Start a session to unlock them — for a slice of your daily budget. Spend it, and they re-block themselves.
Pick the apps that count against your budget. Everything else stays open.
Counting only while you're in the apps.
18 min left in today's budget.
are all spent.
Your apps are blocked until tomorrow. The budget resets at midnight.
for 15 minutes?
This uses 1 of your 2 daily passes. It doesn't touch tomorrow's budget — it's for emergencies, not habits.
child's phone
Configure the budget here, then lock these settings behind a passcode your child doesn't know.
Ration gives you a set amount of screen time each day — an hour, say — that you spend down. Social, games, video, whatever pulls you in. When it's gone, the apps rest.
Why it matters
We didn't choose this — but we're all paying for it.
The apps we reach for a hundred times a day are designed never to run out. There's always another feed, another video, another level, another reason to stay a little longer.
The cost turns up quietly — in our focus, our sleep, our mood. And for children and teenagers, whose minds are still forming, the pull is stronger and it's harder to put down.
Willpower isn't the fix, because willpower isn't what you're up against. What helps is something simpler: a limit you can actually feel.
How it works
A day's worth of screen time, and not a minute more.
Four simple ideas, working quietly in the background.
Off by default
Your chosen apps stay closed until you decide otherwise. No feed is ever one idle thumb-tap away.
Start on purpose
Open your apps when you mean to. At home, tap one of the small tags — on the sofa, by the desk, wherever you are — and the clock starts.
Spend your budget
Social, games, video — every minute comes out of the same daily allowance. Every tag draws from that one pot, so it's the same hour wherever you tap.
Then it rests
When the time's gone, the apps quietly close until tomorrow — and their notifications go quiet with them. No countdown guilt, no negotiation.
Why it's different
Every other tool is a switch. Ration is a budget.
Blockers, timers, focus apps, tap-a-tag gadgets — underneath, they all do the same thing. They turn your apps off, and you turn them back on. That's a switch. And a switch you control is a switch you'll flip.
Every other tool
A switch you flip
Blocked, or not. Tap it off and you've got unlimited time again — so it never really asks anything of you, and you learn nothing from it. The day you stop using it, nothing about your habits has changed.
Ration
A budget that runs out
A set amount of time each day that drains only while you're actually using your apps — put the phone down and nothing's spent — and doesn't come back until tomorrow. There's no off switch to flip, because there's nothing to flip. When it's gone, it's gone.
That's the whole difference. A switch is blocked or it isn't, and asks nothing of you — a budget makes you weigh every single tap. And weighing is where the change actually starts.
Why it sticks
It changes the habit — not just the day.
A switch teaches you nothing: you're blocked, or you're not. A budget that runs down asks you something instead — every time you reach for your phone, is this worth my minutes? That isn't restriction. It's prioritisation, and you're the one doing it.
Do that for a few weeks and something quietly shifts. You stop opening things out of pure reflex, because part of you is already counting the cost. It's the only mechanic in this category that could still work the day you stop using the app — every other tool is a switch, and a switch changes nothing the moment you flip it off.
By then, the habit isn't in the app. It's in you.
Built around one idea
Scarcity does the work willpower can't.
A budget you feel
Set your daily total and watch it go down as you use it — whether that's a feed, a game or an episode. The limit is real, so it actually changes what you do.
Tap a tag, anywhere
Every tag is the same — just tap one wherever you use your phone and the clock starts. They all spend from your one daily budget, so there's no wrong one to reach for.
Passes for real life
Keep a small handful of overrides for the moments that genuinely can't wait — then they're gone until tomorrow.
Silence, not just a lock
While your apps are resting, their notifications rest too — no pings, no badges, nothing buzzing to pull you back. And nothing from us either: no streaks, no nagging.
Everything stays on your phone
Ration runs entirely on your device. There's no account to make, no cloud to sync to, and no data to sell — because how you spend your day is nobody's business but yours.
What it covers
Whatever takes your day.
You choose the apps. Ration covers all of them the same way — one budget, spent down, whatever it goes on.
The feed that never ends
Built by people whose job is to make sure there's always one more post. You were never going to win that by trying harder.
One more episode
Autoplay makes the decision for you about four seconds after the credits start. Unless something else makes it first.
Just one more go
The one that's always mid-round, mid-build, mid-season. For a lot of families this is the biggest slice of the day, not social.
Watching it back later
Filming the gig, the school play, the birthday — and remembering almost none of it. Ration covers the camera too, so some moments stay yours.
The Kit
Ten tags. Put them where you like.
Ten small tags — all the same, just our logo — that you stick wherever your time tends to go: the sofa, the kitchen, the car. Every tag spends from the same daily budget, so there's nothing to assign and no wrong place to put one. Clip one to your keyring to carry with you.
The app works perfectly well without them. The tags just give your phone use a place and a pace — a physical thing to tap as you settle in, rather than a limit that quietly follows you around.
Ten plain tags
All ten are identical — just the Ration mark, nothing to number and nothing to keep track of. Stick them wherever you use your phone, share them across the family, and tap any one to start. Nothing to assign or set up.
Enough to go around
Ten covers most homes twice over. Use what you need and keep the rest for the spot you didn't think of — or for when one gets peeled off badly.
A keyring to carry
Not every tag has to live on a wall. Clip one to your keys or your bag and take it with you — so you can start a session at a café, a friend's place or the park, without hunting for a sticker.
Removable backing
Sticks firmly, comes off cleanly. Move a tag to a different spot, or take one out of the car, without leaving a mark behind.
A setup card
Three steps on the front, the honest details on the back — including exactly how tapping behaves on an iPhone, so nothing about it is a surprise.
In a box worth keeping
Small, tidy, and quiet — designed to sit in a drawer rather than shout from a shelf. More tags can be ordered here whenever you need them.
Stick it
Put the tags wherever the time tends to go — the arm of the sofa, the kitchen worktop, the dashboard — or clip one to your keys.
Tap it
Tap as you settle in and the clock starts, drawing from your one daily budget. Every tag works exactly the same way.
Let it run down
Tap again when you're done, or just let it run out. When the day's budget is gone, the apps rest until tomorrow.
For families
A healthier start with the phone — set by you.
Give your child a daily allowance you decide — covering games as much as social apps — then hand them the freedom to spend it themselves. It's not about locking the phone in a drawer; it's about teaching a limit they can carry for life.
Often the best place to start is your own phone. Once the daily budget has quietly changed how your own evenings feel, putting it on a child's phone isn't a leap — it's the same simple idea they've already watched work.
You hold the overrides. Their apps rest when the time's up. And just like the grown-up version, nothing about their day is tracked, stored, or sold.
Private by design
Your attention is nobody's business but yours.
Ration was built the quiet way on purpose. No sign-up, no cloud, no analytics following you around. Everything happens on your device and stays there.
Coming soon to iOS
A calmer phone is nearly here.
We're putting the finishing touches on Ration. Leave a note and we'll tell you the moment it's ready.