A friction system for your phone

Makes your phone boring.

Elaps adds graceful, escalating friction to the apps that pull you in. Light usage barely notices it. Marathon scrolling waits longer and longer until you'd rather just put the phone down. Which is the point.

Download on the App Store See how it works
iPhone only iOS 17+ 14-day free trial No tracking. Ever.
15m
Maximum wait
After three hours of cumulative use. Long enough that you put the phone down.
$0
Data sold or shared
No analytics, no third-party SDKs. Everything stays on your device.
14 days
Free trial
Try Premium without paying. Cancel any time in iOS Settings.
01 · The mechanic

The wait scales with how much you've used the app today.

Open Instagram in the morning, the wait is short. Open it after two hours of cumulative scrolling, the wait is long enough to make you reconsider. Light users barely notice. Heavy users feel it.

Morning · light usage
A 30-second pause
Midday · warming up
A 3-minute pause
Evening · heavy usage
A 12-minute pause

You can always cancel and not open the app. Or wait through and continue. The wait isn't a block. It's just expensive enough that you actually decide.

02 · The curve

Thirty seconds at first. Up to fifteen minutes after three hours.

Each open of a tracked app shows a wait. The duration is computed from how much you've used that app today. The curve resets at midnight. Customize it with Premium.

Friction duration Tier threshold
15m 8m 5m 3m 30s 0 15m 30m 1h 1.5h 2h 3h 3h+ CUMULATIVE TIME TODAY FRICTION DURATION
03 · What makes Elaps different

A friction system, not a blocker.

01

You can always continue.

Elaps doesn't block you. It just makes the apps annoying to use. The cost of continued scrolling goes up. You decide if it's worth it. Most days, you don't.

02

Blocks the web, too.

When you've used Instagram for an hour, Elaps blocks instagram.com at the DNS layer. No bypass via Safari. The friction is real, not theatrical.

03

Doesn't track you. Period.

No analytics. No third-party SDKs. No servers we control. Everything runs on your iPhone. Your data stays in your iCloud. We can't see your usage even if we wanted to.

04 · Pricing

One price. No referrals. No discounts.

Free works for one app. Premium unlocks the rest. Cancel anytime in iOS Settings.

Free
$0 forever
  • One tracked app
  • Default friction curve
  • On-device tracking
  • Today's usage stats
Download free
Premium Most chosen
$30 /year or $5/month · 14-day free trial
  • Unlimited tracked apps
  • Custom friction curves — Gentle, Default, Strict, or your own
  • Web blocking via on-device DNS
  • Pattern dashboard — week, month, all-time
  • Cross-app cumulative mode
  • Live Activity on the Lock Screen
Start free trial

Cancel anytime in iOS Settings. No referrals. No student discounts. No ads. Ever.

05 · Questions

The things people ask.

When you open a tracked app, an Apple Shortcuts automation runs Elaps first. Elaps shows a full-screen wait scaled to your cumulative use today. After the wait, the app opens. Light use means a short wait. Heavy use means a long one.
Family Controls is the iOS framework that lets Elaps apply the wait to apps you've selected. Without it, we can't function. You grant the authorization to yourself.
Elaps uses an on-device DNS filter (technically a VPN profile) to block websites. The "VPN" doesn't route through any servers. All filtering happens on your iPhone. Nothing leaves your device.
No. Elaps runs entirely on your phone. We have no analytics. No third-party SDKs. No servers we control. Your usage data lives in your iCloud and on your device. We can't see it.
Yes, with Premium. Choose between Gentle, Default, and Strict curves, or build your own. Free tier uses the Default curve.
Wait through it, or tap Cancel and don't open the app. Elaps doesn't block you. It just makes you decide if it's worth the wait. Most of the time, it isn't.
No. iPhone only. iOS 17 or later. The frameworks Elaps relies on don't exist or work differently on other platforms.
iOS Settings → your name → Subscriptions → Elaps → Cancel. Apple handles all subscription management. You keep Premium until your billing period ends.
06 · Stop scrolling on autopilot

Make your phone boring on purpose.

Three minutes from install to your first wait. Fourteen days free. Cancel any time.

Download on the App Store

iPhone only · iOS 17+ · $5/month or $30/year · 14-day free trial