the long way back
to 10,000 bc.

words, not icons. a clock, a few favourites and your top three tasks, on a background you pick. no feeds, no badges, no little red dots.

• press and hold any app to choose what happens when you open it: nothing, a pause, a puzzle, dinos, or blocked.
• hide apps you'd rather not see, and keep the ones you need always open.
• make it yours. light or dark, colours, gradients or your own photo. optional greyscale makes other apps a lot less fun.

social media, short video, video, games, news, shopping, takeaways and ai chat each get free minutes a day, starting just under what you use now and shrinking every week. after that, they cost dinos. start gentle, normal or tough, or go hard with no free minutes at all.

• the more you use, the dearer it gets. the fifth helping of scrolling isn't the price of the first.
• bought time only ticks while it's on screen, and lasts until midnight.
• the useful stuff stays free. messaging, browsing, maps, banking, the camera and your tools.

every app has one of five rules. the years set them, or you do:

your phone counts your push-ups. prop it up and the camera counts every rep of push-ups, squats, sit-ups, jumping jacks and arm raises, and times your planks and wall sits. dancing to a song you pick is coming soon. nothing is recorded.

and there's plenty more: focus sessions, meditating, the gym, learning apps, the evening journal, time away from your phone, the wake-up alarm and walking.

run with just your watch and the dinos are waiting when you get back. fitbit, garmin, samsung health and the rest all count.

choose walking, low-impact, wheelchair or none. arm raises work sitting down. with none, you earn through focus, meditating, the journal, learning apps, good habits and time away.

you start in 2026. every week, each kind of app goes a little further back: fewer free minutes, then a pause, then a puzzle, then gone. you pick the pace, and where to stop, anywhere from 2015 to 10,000 bc.

each kind goes the year before it was invented:

messaging, browsers, calls, maps and banking never go. the timeline.

chatbots are useful, and very easy to hand every thought to. chatgpt, claude, gemini, copilot and the rest get their own free minutes, apps and websites alike.

• from day one: free minutes, then dinos.
• from 2024: a puzzle first, too.
• 2021: gone. back to working things out yourself.

give any app, kind of app or website a daily limit: the most you can use it in a day. once you hit it, it's closed until tomorrow, even with dinos. lowering a daily limit starts now. raising one waits, like anything that makes ditchd easier. urges pass.

or give any app a rule of its own, or block it by name.

• blocked means blocked. covered the instant it opens, even from a link. you can't tap past it.
• the off switches are guarded. the settings you'd use to switch ditchd off close as soon as they open. go on, try. digby will know.
• another home screen? ditchd covers it and asks you to pick it again.
• uninstalling waits 7 days, with the uninstall guard on.
• the clock can't be fooled. ditchd keeps its own time.
• cheating costs you. a flat battery is forgiven. switching ditchd off on purpose costs dinos, then a step back in time.
• no signing out. there's no sign-out button, and deleting your account waits 7 days.
• easier always waits. at least a day, then you confirm it within 12 hours. there's always a way off. it's just slow.

instagram in a browser costs what the instagram app costs. browsing itself stays free. adult and gambling sites are blocked from the start.

the optional strict filter blocks them in every app, along with the usual tricks for sneaking round. it runs on your phone, and your browsing never leaves it.

pick the apps and people that may interrupt you. everything else waits silently in an inbox that opens at 12:00 and 18:00, or your own times. opening it early costs a minute of waiting.

calls from your people, repeat callers and alarms always ring.

alarms that only stop after a task: 30 steps, squats, a puzzle, or scanning a code you left in another room. getting up pays 5 dinos. sounds range from sunrise to a mammoth horn.

then a morning routine: the fun apps stay shut until you've done what you chose, like planning the day.

start a session now, or set focus times like 9 till 12 on weekdays. everything but the apps you allow is blocked. pick strict and there's no stopping it. finish and earn a dino a minute. bail early and earn nothing.

sat on your phone too long? ditchd nudges you. a hundred steps or a minute's stretch clears it. in strict mode, the fun apps pause until you've moved.

an evening routine and a nudge to wind down. then your phone gets stricter, buying time stops, and home becomes a dim screen with a big clock.

• quiet until morning. only the people you choose can ring.
• sleep sounds. rain, a fan, brown noise or waves.
• in bed on time pays 15 dinos.
• no sneaky lie-ins. moving bedtime later waits.

promise yourself the gym three times a week, or focus every weekday. you pick what missing it costs: nothing, 20 dinos, a stricter week, or time off the apps that pull at you. keep it and earn meteors, then spend them on:

• a free month or a free year of ditchd.
• a sticker pack or a ditchd tee, posted to you.
• a digby plushie. digby himself, in the post.

free month free year stickers tee plushie

keep enough promises and ditchd pays for itself.

smoking, gambling, drinking, one app? ditchd keeps it about who you are now ("smoke-free"), not a countdown that resets when you slip. when a craving hits: two minutes of breathing, your reason in big letters, and a button to call your person. it stays on your phone.

ditchd isn't a treatment. if it really worries you, talk to someone you trust or your doctor.

pick what pulls hardest and go without it for 7, 14 or 30 days, apps and websites. afterwards, ditchd asks what you actually missed. usually not much.

your week and month against life before ditchd: dinos, focus, promises kept and how far back in time you've gone. plus the hours you reach for your phone most. a bad week is just a bad week.

digby lives on the coin on your home screen. tap him for your dinos, promises and rewards, and pick his colour. try to switch ditchd off. digby will know.

drag to spin him. tap and he hops.

emergency calls and sos, the phone app, incoming calls, crash and fall detection and your emergency info are never blocked, in any mode. you can also keep apps always open: banking, maps, tickets, a medical app.

your programs follow the same rules as your phone. blocked ones close, and focus sessions earn a dino a minute.

• your dinos on both. earn at the gym, spend on the laptop.
• part of the same plan. nothing extra to pay.