When your thumb opens social media, it finds an idea instead.

Snub Phone locks the apps you choose until the time you set. Open one anyway and you get one thing to do instead, with your kids, your partner or on your own.

Snub Phone

A hand holds an iPhone up out of the clouds. At 4:21 the screen shows an idea: Be a ship.

Get notified

Snub Phone for iPhone and Android isn't out yet. It will be free: no subscription, no in-app purchases.

phubbing noun

Snubbing the people you're with by looking at your phone.

Snub Phone helps you put the phone down and stop phubbing the people in the room.

A closed laptop on a wooden table in late afternoon sun, a phone face down beside it, toys on the rug.

4:00 PM

The laptop closes.

Work chat is still on your phone. So is social media. Both stay locked until 5:00 PM, while you're with your kids.

How it works

1Choose the apps and the time
Pick who you're with and until when. Only the apps you choose are locked.
2Open one anyway
Every app you lock shows the same idea instead. To stop early, you type a reason and wait 60 seconds.
35:00 PM. Your apps are back.
Your apps are back. There's no streak to keep. The session ends on its own. After work, with kids, starts again at 4:00 PM on the next weekday.

One thing to do instead

Every idea for time with your kids is one we've played at home.

For parentsFor couplesSolo

Be a ship.
Lie on the floor and let the kids sit on you. Steer around storms and icebergs together.
Lie down on the rug.
You're a mountain. Let them climb you.
Tape an obstacle course.
Painter's tape on the floor: shapes to jump into, lines to jump over, spots to run around. Run it with them, then hand them the tape.
Kids barefoot. Painter's tape only, so it peels off the floor.
Red, green, squat.
Laps around the house. You call it: red, everyone freezes; green, everyone runs. Move on red, do one squat.
Kids barefoot.