BreakFree Cell Phone Addiction
"BreakFree's Android app tracks the amount of time you spend looking at your phone, and gives you a heads-up when it might be time for a break."
- Mashable
BreakFree in "16 of the best new Android apps from May"
- The Next Web
"How much time do you really spend on your phone? Now there's an app that will answer that question -
- as well as help smartphone addicts learn how to live a 'healthy digital lifestyle.'"
- abc News
BreakFree is the best Android app for monitoring and taking control of your smartphone usage habits and your digital life. It helps you check your addiction levels and also helps you unplug and disconnect from your smartphone. With BreakFree you can focus on what's important.
How many times in a day you check your phone? From the time we wake up till the time we hit the bed, we are hooked to our phones (Apps, Calls, SMS, texting, taking pictures/videos, Games, social networking).
If you think you are spending an unhealthy amount of time on your smartphone and getting distracted or are are feeling addicted, BreakFree will help you take control of your life and and help you focus and spend time with the people you care about.
BreakFree is a revolutionary app that will help you maintain a controlled digital lifestyle. It monitors phone and app usage. With visually appealing characters, graphs and statistics, the app guides you on how you can control phone usage. It also gives you a set of customizable tools which help you disconnect from your phone during your off time. Use these tools to get unplugged and disconnect from your phone, get some much needed time off.
1. Usage Monitoring: The app studies your phone usage pattern in the background and warns you with timely notifications whenever you go overboard. E.g. if you are using a particular app for long, if you are making too many calls or if you have used the phone for over an hour, BreakFree will notify you to slow down and enjoy life.
2. Non Intrusive notifications: Using a highly advanced algorithm, the app calculates an addiction score in real time and maintains a detailed history of your scores. The app communicates results through a friendly and engaging character called Sato (You'll love this guy :).
3. Phone Management Tools: The app also provides you phone management tools such as blocking notifications, disabling the internet, rejecting phone calls and sending auto text messages. You can unplug when you need to or you can control your habits by scheduling these tools to run on a given day at a given time. For instance, say you want to spend family time every Sunday from 3 PM to 6 PM, schedule your phone to disable sound and internet so that you are not disturbed by calls and notifications during that time and can completely focus on your family time.
4. Usage Statistics: View usage stats for your top used apps, call patterns and other functions to help you make informed decisions on taking necessary actions. E.g., If you know you've launched WhatsApp 30 times in a day, then it’s time to take a step back and cut down on that.
5. Parental Control: For the younger smartphone users, BreakFree can be used as a great parental control device. By installing it on your child's smartphone you can monitor his / her phone usage, schedule internet hours, etc.
Smartphone addiction is a growing problem all over the world across age groups. There are many instances of people seeking treatment for Nomophobia. It’s about time we learn to unplug, learn to disconnect and start to enjoy life. Let’s start using our phones the way they were meant to be. Let’s make time for the more important things in life.
If you encounter any issues or have any suggestions to improve the app, please write to us at [email protected]
By installing this app you agree to the following privacy policy: http://www.oneaudience.com/privacy/?package_name=mrigapps.andriod.breakfree.deux
Category : Productivity
Reviews (19)
Frustrated! It erased a long message I was in the middle of writing! Yeah, the app works. Keeps me more mindful of time passing while online. Reminds me when I've reached the time limit I set for myself. But when it pops up in the middle of writing something sometimes it deletes everything that's been written! This time it was while I was commenting on an Instagram story. When I dismissed the Space pop-up reminder, my unfinished Instagram message disappeared with it. So frustrated!!
I had high hopes for this app. After using it for several weeks, I was hoping for more. For example, they could turn this into a game, where you get points or "badges" for using your phone less, or anytime you turn your phone off. It just keeps on displaying the same list of messages over and over again and has not had any impact on my phone utilization. Worst of all, the messages sometimes display while I'm driving and using my phone for GPS, which is dangerous. I will be uninstalling this app.
I like this app a lot! It's clean and doesn't feel spammy or have any annoying popup ads. I like the free version, and even though I wish I have more controls with the free version, I love that the full version is so affordable. I hate putting money into apps, but I believe this one would be well worth paying the small price for. I definitely want to buy the full version with the 8 day course. I'll update my rating after I buy it! I'm sure I'll just love this app even more!
Does not work. I even paid for the pro version. The notification bar timer is usually wrong, sometimes getting stuck in a certain time or a certain number of unlocks. My progress chart wouldn't update til the next day. Useless. I tried to email them about this instead of immediately asking for a refund but they never responded. Now the app has quit working entirely. It shows absolutely zero use for yesterday, and now, at 4:30PM today, I'm at zero. Yeah, right. This app is totally useless.
It doesn't lock you out like most other apps. But it does make you conscious of how often you reach for your phone. Not for real phone addicts, but for the average person looking to reduce screen time, it's perfect. I also like the funny messages that pop up. Update: id really like if this app ran as a background service. Somedays I only realise late in the day that the app hasn't been running all day.
It's a good app that does exactly what it says in the description. I simply believe that it doesn't make sense that it is a paid feature to exclude phone calls from being counted towards your total time using the phone. The goal is to curb phone usage... And let's be real, the problem with phone addiction today is with app usage like Instagram and Snapchat, not using the phone as a verbal communication device.
this app is nice because it shows you the time you spend on your phone and reminds you too get off. the time display in the notification doesn't update frequently, so it shows the wrong time spent on your phone.i wish that the messages to turn off your phone are more motivational, so they would feel less like nag screens. also it would be better if the screen telling you that you should turn off your phone shows above the current app vs switching apps, which interrupts videos.
Don't waste your money on the pro version!!! I bought it so I'd be able to compare progress with a friend, but when I go to compare usage with his profile, it shows a mirror image of my own usage! Also, the pro version only gives you 4 friend requests, and I had to use 3 of them before a request successfully showed up on my friend's app. I contacted support over 2 weeks ago, still no response. I am infuriated that I wasted money on this. Eight day course was decent, but should really be free.
This app has really helped me reduce my time on the phone. I'm still not down to my goal, but I have cut about an hour a day. The only reason I haven't given it 5 stars is the time keeping problem other reviewers have commented on. I see it listed as a bug fix, but it still keeps time erratically on my phone. The next day in "Progress" it shows the right time, but it would be more useful if it was up to date all the time, I've been running over my goals since at the end of the day all the time is often reported low. I also have the "Focus Time" not shutting off problem, but that's actually sort of an advantage! :-) I upgraded to pro and I have no trouble excluding phone time which another person had trouble with. I'm assuming that in the next few updates all will be fixed.
Really wanted to like this app but found that it tracked my behaviour without actually impacting it. AppDetox is closer to the more heavy-handed approach I need but had its own issues. As did apps that showed a floating timer but didn't do much either. May revisit the app a year from now but, for now, it Additional notes: the app crashes anytime I tried to open the whitelist. Additionally, the use of 'settings' pages mixed with cogs, wrenches, side menu and subpages made the app needlessly complex. Devs really need to sit down and figure out what they actually want the app to do, the mechanisms to do so, and, once they have a more coherent vision, build an app experience around that.
I think it's a good app to limit your phone usage. But, I find it disturbing when I enabled the notification blocker for certain time (10pm-6am), and I woke up the next day knowing I'm missing lot of notifications because it didn't give me log/review what notifications i got during that time. And even they provide list of apps that received notification during that time , it only show number of notification, not the notifications itself.
Unsafe when using map apps. Needs to differentiate between boredom online fidgeting and necessary things like using map apps for directions on a long journey. There is a big difference and its reminders pop up at inconvenient times during the journey and you have to dismiss them to continue using your guidance. This is actually unsafe. Otherwise good but this is a big flaw.
This is helpful in reminding me when I've been on my phone for longer than I should, but the app itself is terrible. I paused it last night and never unpaused it, and this morning I edited a video (I always pause when I do that) But, not much later, I get a pop-up that I've been on my phone for over an hour! I go to the app to find that somehow it was unpaused, and even so didn't give me any reminders for the 7 minutes I have it set to. This kind of thing happens a LOT. Please fix!
I mostly love it. Space really does a great job of making you aware of how much you are on your phone, and you can set your own limits, etc. It gives you the option to customize for specific apps (work-related, etc) but doesn't allow you to access certain apps for customization. It would be nice to have more options in this department, especially for things like Spotify, where my phone is playing music in the background. That's not screen time!
Like the premise of the app, however a few issues have come about: 1. When I check the time with my phone, it counts as an unlock, even though I didn't go through the pin/fingerprint. 2. When I make a phone call, it resets the time for the day. So after calling my mom, even though I spent an hour beforehand, I'm back at zero. 3. I use my phone for work, but I wish there was a way to designate that this is productive time vs time wasted. Otherwise, will keep using it
Application needs to allow the user to choose a higher amount of unlocks per day. The current limit for allowed unlocks per day is 80. After 80 unlocks, SPACE aggressively annoys you with a notification EVERY TIME you unlock your phone. The only way to prevent it is to open SPACE, and then pause the application. Pausing the application was not a straight forward process. It took me quite some time to figure out how to pause the application. The user interface could be a lot more friendly. Visual data analysis of your phone usage trends would be amazing.
this app would get a much higher score if not for a persistent issue. both my wife and i are using it together to help ourselves be more in the moment. but, bith kf us need our phones for work, where we have it open, but not looking at it. my wife can exclude apps. my app just shuts down if click the same button. i have sent feedback at least 6 times, and emailed support and in the two weeks that I have tried to fix this, i have had zero response from the app. will delete soon if not fixed.
Like many, my mobile phone is my ONLY phone. As a private contractor, it is my work phone, too. I tried Space for an hour before I realized it was counting my phone calls as part of the usage restriction, and you CAN'T TURN THAT FEATURE OFF without upgrading to the paid version. I can't give this app a proper chance until that's changed. And I won't pay for this app without getting to really try it first.
Uncomplicated and effective. It makes a real difference. My phone usage has dropped quit a bit, and I'm far more intentional when I do pick up my phone. I also have the ability to exempt some apps from being monitored, such as my meditation or reading apps, which is useful. I can also pause the SPACE app, which is good for the times when I'm actively doing work on my phone.