Indie App Spotlight: The ‘Before You’ bundle offers four effective screen time apps – Charm

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Most people believe they’re spending too much time on their phones – but don’t necessarily know how to do better. Developer Florian Schimanke has created four great apps to help you with your screen time in different ways. You can get them individually, or you can also buy them all as a bundle at a discounted rate.

The ‘Before You’ bundle offers four screen time related apps, including:

They all come with similarly thematic names, and they all do what they say on the tin.

App breakdown

Stroll before you Scroll ties into your health data, requiring you to hit your daily step goal before you can use certain apps. It doesn’t have to be a blanket screen time block – you can choose what you don’t want to use. But, once you’ve committed to your step goal, you can’t use said apps until you hit it. You can set it as high or as low as you’d like – but the goal is to keep you fit and mindful with a light screen time nudge.

Scan before you Can is a bit similar in concept to the Brick hardware device you might’ve heard of. Instead of requiring physical hardware though, it relies on QR codes, and you have to scan the QR code located in another room before you can unlock your apps – no easy bypasses.

Your Day before you Play uses the Apple Reminders API to ensure you get your tasks done before you can use whatever apps you put behind your blocklist, whether that be social media apps or mobile gaming. The idea is that work comes first, and you can’t distract yourself until afterwards.

Lastly, Zone before you Phone is a bit more unique. Instead of being an overall screen time management tool – it works based on your location. For instance, if you’re at work, you can have it automatically hide certain apps from distracting you, all using Apple Screen Time. You can block on either arrival or departure from said location, and you can have up to 20 location zones to track app usage at.

Download the apps

Each app in the bundle is priced at $2.99 individually, with no ads or subscriptions required – just a simple one time purchase. If you buy the bundle, however, you get four apps for the price of three – being priced at just $8.99 for the whole package.

If taking control of your screen time is something you’re interested in, I’d heavily consider at least one of these apps. They’re all very thoughtful ideas, minimal in design, support tons of Apple technologies to feel seamless on iPhone.