Blog · RESEARCH
Does the one sec app work?
Yes, for many impulsive opens. No, if you wait out every delay and still want a habit you keep.
TLDR: A 2023 PNAS study of one sec found people walked away from 36% of gated app opens over six weeks. That is real. It is also a delay, not a journal. If you want the pause to become a sentence, look at Gratlock.
What one sec is
one sec sits between you and apps you mark as distracting. You wait, breathe, or otherwise pass a short gate. Then you may enter. The company describes it as delay, not a total block, which matches how Apple Screen Time hard limits often fail. Product: one-sec.app. App Store: one sec.
The study people cite
Grüning, Riedel, Schmidt, and Terzimehić published “Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec” in PNAS in February 2023. PubMed’s summary is the line you see on landing pages: on average, 36% of the times participants tried to open a target app, they stopped during the intervention. Full paper: PNAS. PubMed: 36795756. PMC copy linked from Gratlock’s homepage: PMC9974409. Authors’ recap: one sec research.
That is field data, not a lab with 18 undergrads. It still is not “this app halves everyone’s screen time forever.” Marketing sometimes says 57% fewer opens; treat that as company-reported unless you can match it to the paper. The 36% abandoned-open figure is the one in the abstract.
Why a delay works at all
The tap is faster than the thought. A few seconds lets the thought catch up. Reddit threads about ADHD and scrolling often praise one sec for exactly that reason: the holy-grail posts are about fewer accidental opens, not a new personality.
Self-chosen time caps are a separate, complementary finding. AER 2022, ~2,000 people, 22 minutes less use per day across 12 weeks: Allcott, Gentzkow, and Song.
When one sec does not work
You can wait. Every time. Then the gate is a speed bump on the way to the same hour. You can disable it when you are tired. You can keep the delay and still feel like the day produced nothing but a quieter graph.
Does the one sec app work in those cases? As a brake, sometimes. As a practice you can reread, no. That is not a knock. It was not built to be a journal.
A pause that leaves a sentence
Gratlock uses Apple’s Screen Time picker, asks for one grateful sentence, then opens your apps for a window you set. The 145-study gratitude meta-analysis (24,804 people) found a small, consistent wellbeing lift: Choi et al., PNAS 2025.
If one sec already cut your opens and you are happy, stay. If you like the science of the pause and want the interrupt to become a private log on your iPhone, try Gratlock. Full comparison: Gratlock vs one sec.
Free trial
Start Gratlock’s 3-day trial, write the next sentence when you reach for the feed, cancel in Apple Settings if it is not for you.