Frequently asked questions

The Android app and this site are provided as-is during early availability. Pricing, if any, will be stated clearly before you pay. Enforcement features do not require a subscription to operate locally on device.

Accessibility service (to detect marked apps), display over other apps (grainy grey overlay), device administrator (anti-tamper), battery exemption, and optionally write secure settings for system grayscale. Each permission maps to a concrete enforcement mechanism. Full breakdown: Permissions. Setup order is on the Help page.

During The Window, yes — maintenance hours are for rule changes and escape hatches. Outside The Window, uninstall and tamper screens are blocked while enforcement is armed. Emergency recovery via ADB is documented in Help.

Tab is active session debt — time you are spending or have spent in a marked app during a run. Collection is stacked penalty debt you owe before normal access returns, including VIG markup on accumulated time. While collection debt is active, marked apps are locked out.

Marked apps block. Not a banner — a lockout. Try to open one during penalty and the Guillotine sends you home. The screen may go grayscale with a grainy grey overlay until you pay down collection or wait out the penalty.

Limited daily exemptions. You must type a confirmation phrase to take one. A pass buys temporary relief; it does not erase history and it does not reset the ledger silently.

A mandatory countdown before a marked app opens. Default floor is twenty seconds. Use it to break autopilot or walk away before the tab starts.

Yes — that is supported. The Vig targets active doomscrolling (screen on, app in use), not background listening. While your display is off, tab time on hard-marked apps such as YouTube does not keep running — audiobooks, podcasts, music, and YouTube Premium audio-only playback with the phone locked are fine. A few seconds of tab from before you locked the screen is possible; hours of background audio do not stack debt. When the screen is on and you are in the app, tab accrues normally.

Penalty state degrades the display: system grayscale plus a grainy grey overlay while enforcement is active. Lockout is the enforcement; the overlay is the texture. Sensory friction, not punishment theater.

It runs a background service and a periodic watchdog to ensure you do not bypass enforcement. When idle or screen off, battery draw is negligible (under 1–2% per day). When penalty overlays, grain, or countdowns are rendering, GPU/CPU overhead increases. However, because the system is designed to force you off your device, if your overall screen-on time drops dramatically — your phone's battery will last longer in practice.

Core enforcement runs on device. This website and any future cloud features require network access separately.

Wait out the penalty, use a pass if one remains, or follow the emergency ADB procedure on the Help page. The app assumes you read that before arming enforcement.