Oh My Hours iPhone App Marks the Hours Lost to Scrolling
The iOS app Oh My Hours divides each day into hourly blocks and marks in black those spent in distracting apps. It is one of the newer tools aimed at helping people cut their phone use.
A newer iOS app, Oh My Hours, takes a different approach to limiting smartphone use: it splits each day into hourly blocks and shows which of them the user has "lost" to social media and other distracting apps. Tech journalist David Nield describes it in Wired. There is no Android version yet. Similar tools are already built into phones by Apple (Screen Time) and Google (Digital Wellbeing), but this app focuses on lost hours rather than total screen time.
How it works
Users choose which apps count as distractions, either by category, such as social media and games, or one by one. If such an app is used for a set amount of time, that hour of the day is marked as lost. The main screen shows each day as a row of circles, and every circle filled in black is a lost hour.
By default, an hour is marked as lost if the user spends only a few seconds in a distracting app. The reviewer argues the strict threshold is needed, otherwise there would be a temptation to use up free time after each hour resets. He also noticed the opposite effect: once an hour was lost, he felt like scrolling even more until it ended.
The app also lets users set "quiet hours". If a distracting app is opened during that period, all blocks in it turn black. An hour can be reset if it was marked by mistake, and statistics can be exported as a CSV file.
Pricing and alternatives
The app is free, but customization and the month and year views require a payment of $10 per year or $20 for a lifetime license. The article also mentions other apps: One Sec, Forest, ScreenZen, Roots and Brick, which pairs with a $59 physical NFC device to block chosen apps.
