22 min/day
Less app use
A randomized trial of roughly 2,000 people found that self-set app limits reduced use by 22 minutes a day across 12 weeks.
American Economic Review, 2022GRATITUDE JOURNAL + APP BLOCKER
One grateful sentence opens your apps.
Choose the apps that pull you in. One grateful sentence opens them for a window you set.
For iPhoneFree 3-day trial
Your unlock window
15 minutes
to rest of day
to rest of day
THE IDEA
Your distraction becomes your journal.
Most app blockers ask you to resist. Gratlock gives the impulse somewhere better to go. Every unlock leaves behind a real sentence from your life.
HOW IT WORKS
A little friction.
Something worth keeping.
-
01
Choose what pulls you in
Pick distracting apps with Apple’s Screen Time picker. Gratlock cannot see which apps you chose.
-
02
Meet a pause instead
When you reach for a locked app, Gratlock asks for one thing you are grateful for right now.
-
03
Write, unlock, move on
Your apps open for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, or the rest of the day. The lock returns automatically.
THE PART YOU KEEP
A gratitude journal that writes itself into your day.
No streak pressure. No blank-page ritual. Just honest moments collected whenever habit brings you back.
“The smell of coffee this morning while the house was still quiet.”
RESEARCH BEHIND THE APPROACH
The pause is the science.
The sentence is the soul.
36%
Opens abandoned
Across six weeks of field data, people using the pause app one sec walked away from 36% of their gated app opens.
PNAS, 2023145 studies
Gratitude adds up
A 2025 meta-analysis spanning 24,804 people found a small, consistent improvement in wellbeing from gratitude practices.
PNAS, 2025
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
Your gratitude belongs to you.
Your journal is stored on your iPhone. Gratlock has no account and no server that can read your entries.
Apple’s Screen Time system keeps your app choices private, even from us.
Read the privacy policyMAKE THE NEXT OPEN COUNT
Trade one scroll
for one grateful thought.
Free 3-day trial. Then $49.99/year or $9.99/week. Cancel anytime.