One question before the apps you open without thinking: are you sure?
Pick the apps. Opening one shows a shield instead.
Say yes, wait a minute, and it's yours for fifteen. Say no, and it just closes.
No streaks, no scores, no account. Nothing leaves your iPhone.
How it works · Requirements · Build it · Layout · Support · Privacy
Who it is for
- You open some apps on reflex and want a moment to notice before you're in.
- You've tried hard limits and switched them off the first time they got in the way. Intentful never refuses; it only asks, and makes you wait a minute.
- You want it to stay on your phone. No account, no server, no analytics — and the source is here to check.
Apple's Screen Time APIs can only trigger on cumulative minutes of use, never on an app being opened. So Intentful doesn't use thresholds at all — it applies a shield to your selected apps and leaves it there. A permanently shielded app shows the shield every time you open it, which is exactly the prompt we want.
The first Yes records the time and closes the app. Reopened within the minute, the shield counts down and Yes does nothing. Once the minute is up the shield offers Unlock for 15 min for five minutes, after which the wait starts over. While waiting, Not now becomes Cancel wait.
Tapping Unlock for 15 min exempts that one app from the shield and schedules
a one-off 15-minute DeviceActivity interval. When that interval ends, the
monitor extension drops the exemption and the app asks again.
The shield closes the app rather than revealing it, so you reopen it yourself.
One thing about that window is worth knowing, because it surprises people: it runs on the clock whether you use the app or not. Your other chosen apps are unaffected and keep asking.
Fifteen minutes is Apple's minimum schedule length, not a design choice.
- A physical iPhone — Screen Time APIs do not exist in the Simulator
- Xcode with your Apple ID signed in (Xcode › Settings › Accounts)
- An Apple Developer account
- iOS 16+
npm install
APPLE_TEAM_ID=YOURTEAM BUNDLE_ID=com.you.intentful APP_GROUP=group.you.intentful \
npm run buildAPPLE_TEAM_ID is required and has no default — the build fails with a clear
message without it. BUNDLE_ID and APP_GROUP fall back to this project's own
identifiers, which are registered to someone else's team, so set your own.
Putting them in .env.local works too; that file is gitignored.
npm run build prebuilds the iOS project, compiles with xcodebuild, and
installs onto the connected device. npm run dev starts the dev server on the
local network, which is what lets the dev client find it automatically. If the
phone and Mac are on different networks, use npm run dev -- --tunnel and enter
the URL by hand.
Register these four App IDs in the developer portal, each with Family Controls and App Groups capabilities, plus one App Group:
com.you.intentful
com.you.intentful.ActivityMonitorExtension
com.you.intentful.ShieldConfiguration
com.you.intentful.ShieldAction
The Family Controls (Development) capability is self-serve — tick it and it works. Shipping to TestFlight or the App Store additionally requires the Family Controls (Distribution) entitlement, which is requested from Apple and reviewed manually. The request is a short form and the grant is assigned to your whole account, not to one bundle ID — but you then have to enable it under Additional Capabilities on each of the four identifiers, which is not the same checkbox as the development one.
app/
_layout.tsx Stack, nothing else
index.tsx the only screen: app picker + on/off
lib/
colors.ts palette, sampled from the app icon
constants.ts selection id, re-arm window
device-activity.ts Screen Time authorization
monitoring.ts arm() / disarm()
shield-config.ts the "Are you sure?" shield and its two buttons
plugins/
withAutoSigning.js sets automatic signing on all four targets
targets/ the three extensions, forked from react-native-device-activity
Built on react-native-device-activity by Kingstinct, which does the hard work of exposing Apple's Screen Time APIs to React Native.