Timelapse: Adaptive Blocking

You said 5 minutes. It became hours.

It's 1:00 AM. You open your phone "for a minute." At 2:04 AM you're still there, unable to say where the hour went.

Screen time gives you one number. Reminders give you something to ignore. Timelapse: Adaptive Blocking shows you what happened, then holds the line.

SEE THE HOUR
Start a session and Timelapse replays your screen as a fast timelapse, so you see how the minutes passed. Weekly Rhythm charts hourly usage for up to 52 weeks.

SET THE RULE BEFORE TEMPTATION
• Night Lock and Focus Block schedules, with break windows
• Quick Lock: a countdown you can't stop early from inside the app
• Per-app daily limits and website blocking
• Optional YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels blocking, not the whole app
• Strict Mode: give the off-switch passcode to someone you trust

IT HARDENS ITSELF
Adaptive Protection tightens up on its own when it spots a pattern:
• Heavy late-night use of an app can trigger an automatic overnight limit
• Hopping between blocked apps to dodge a block can trigger a 30-minute containment
• Every change is shown to you. Review it, or exempt an app you need for work.

OUR MINIMUM STANDARD
Social Cooldown is the built-in rule you accept during setup: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Reddit, Snapchat, and YouTube share a 30-minute allowance, then block for 30 minutes. A continuous 30-minute break resets it. It remains active when other rules are off; learners can choose a 5 AM–10 PM YouTube exception. Timelapse counts app time, not content.

AN HONEST RECORD
The Protection Log records permission changes, interruptions, Strict Mode, and Adaptive Protection actions. Chained entries flag edits; PDF reports show what changed. You can break your rules, but not hide the pattern.

HOW IT DIFFERS FROM OTHER SCREEN-TIME AND APP-BLOCKER APPS
• Replays sessions as timelapses
• A built-in minimum standard and adaptive protection
• Tamper-evident log of protection changes
• No account, ads, cloud backend, or cloud AI analysis
• Android only, English and Spanish. Subscription required; no free plan.

YOUR SCREEN STAYS YOURS
Captured and stored on your phone, only after you approve Android's screen-capture prompt. No audio. Banking, wallet, and password-manager apps are blacked out automatically. The developer never receives or views your recordings.

TIMELAPSE ISN'T FOR EVERYONE
If you're tired of negotiating with yourself, Timelapse was built for you.

SUBSCRIPTION AND FREE TRIAL
A Google Play subscription is required for normal use. Google Play may offer an eligible 7-day trial on the monthly or 14-day on the anual plan, depending on your account. Price, billing period, renewal, and cancellation terms are shown before you buy. Cancel anytime in Google Play.

PERMISSIONS, EXPLAINED
• Usage Access: reads which app is in the foreground to count time and enforce rules
• Website blocking (optional): Android's VpnService creates a local VPN so Timelapse can apply your website rules on this device. It reads domain names in DNS lookups, not page content, URL paths, searches, passwords, messages, or other browsing traffic. Allowed DNS lookups are encrypted with DNS over TLS to Cloudflare Public DNS (1.1.1.1 / 1.0.0.1); Cloudflare receives the requested domain and network source IP and says its resolver logs are deleted within 25 hours. If the encrypted connection fails or a network blocks port 853, DNS lookups may fail while website blocking is active. Timelapse does not send ordinary browsing traffic to a developer server.
• Shorts/Reels blocking (optional): an Accessibility Service you turn on yourself briefly reads that app's on-screen structure in memory, stores nothing, and shares nothing.

IMPORTANT
Timelapse is for voluntary self-accountability on your own device. It is not for monitoring other people, hidden recording, employee tracking, parental control, therapy, medical use, addiction treatment, or guaranteed behavior change. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any brand named here.