Blog · COMPARISON

Gratlock vs one sec

Same family of idea. Different thing you walk away with.

TLDR: one sec delays the open so you can change your mind. Gratlock uses the same pause, asks for one grateful sentence, then unlocks your apps for a window you set. one sec has a published field study. Gratlock adds a journal that lives only on your iPhone.

The shared bet

Hard blocks teach you to hunt for Ignore Limit. A short interruption at the door is kinder, and it has evidence. In PNAS (2023), people using one sec walked away from 36% of gated app opens over six weeks. The intervention reduced target-app use without forbidding it. Paper: “Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec”. PubMed abstract: 36795756. one sec’s own research page: one-sec.app/research.

Self-set limits help too. AER 2022: about 2,000 people, 22 minutes less app use per day over 12 weeks when they set their own caps. Allcott, Gentzkow, and Song.

What one sec does

You pick apps. On open, one sec holds you for a breath or a short wait. You can still proceed. Many people do not. The product copy is blunt: delay, do not ban. App Store: one sec.

Strengths: studied in the wild, simple mental model, works if a few seconds is all you need. Limits: once you wait it out, the session is a normal scroll. Nothing is saved. If you like the pause but want a keepable habit, you still need another app for that.

What Gratlock does

You pick apps with Apple’s Screen Time picker. Gratlock never learns which ones. When you hit a lock, you write one sentence about something you are grateful for. Then the apps open for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, or the rest of the day. The lock returns on its own.

The sentences become a private journal on the phone. No account, no server that can read entries. Details: privacy policy.

The gratitude piece is not a vibe. A 2025 PNAS meta-analysis of 145 papers and 24,804 people found a small, consistent wellbeing improvement from gratitude interventions: Choi, Cha, McCullough, et al..

Side by side

• Mechanism: one sec delays. Gratlock requires a sentence, then a timed unlock.
• Evidence: one sec has the PNAS field study. Gratlock cites that pause literature plus the gratitude meta-analysis and the AER limit trial.
• What you keep: one sec, a lower open rate. Gratlock, a journal.
• Privacy: Gratlock stores journal text on device and cannot see blocked apps.
• Price: Gratlock is $49.99/year or $7/week after a 3-day trial. Check one sec’s current App Store listing for theirs; it has historically been a paid subscription as well.

Who should pick which

Pick one sec if you already like breathing timers and you only want fewer accidental opens. Pick Gratlock if blank-page gratitude apps never lasted, and the scroll itself is the reminder you will actually obey.

You can use both in sequence. A delay that sometimes stops you, plus a sentence when you proceed, is a reasonable stack. Most people will not maintain two paid tools. Choose the artifact you want at the end of the month: a quieter Screen Time graph, or a quieter graph and a list of ordinary good things.

Try Gratlock

Start the free 3-day trial. Read the product on gratlock.com.