Friction

Friction — Digital Wellbeing Friction is a digital wellbeing application designed to help you reduce distractions, improve focus, and build healthier relationships with technology. Many digital experiences are designed to encourage instant engagement. Social media, entertainment, news, and other apps can make it easy to spend more time than intended on your device. Friction introduces intentional pauses before accessing selected applications, helping you make more mindful decisions about your attention and time. Instead of relying on willpower alone, Friction creates a moment of reflection between impulse and action. KEY FEATURES • Restrict distracting applications Select apps that frequently interrupt your focus and add intentional barriers before access. Reduce impulsive app launches and encourage more conscious usage. • Focus interventions When a restricted app is opened, Friction displays an intervention screen that interrupts automatic habits and gives you an opportunity to reconsider whether accessing the app aligns with your current goals. • Intentional delays Create customizable delays before accessing selected applications. Even a short pause can help reduce mindless scrolling and increase awareness of digital habits. • Digital wellbeing tools Build healthier technology habits with features designed to promote intentional usage, self-control, focus, and attention management. • Usage insights Review locally processed usage information and statistics to understand how you interact with your device and identify patterns that may affect your productivity. • Focus sessions Create dedicated periods for deep work, studying, reading, or other important activities by reducing access to distracting applications during critical moments. • Simple, distraction-free design A clean interface keeps the experience focused on usability and your goals. WHO IS FRICTION FOR? Friction can help: • Students who want to stay focused while studying • Professionals working on important tasks • People seeking healthier digital habits • Anyone trying to reduce excessive social media usage • Anyone who wants greater control over attention and screen time PRIVACY FIRST Privacy is a core principle of Friction. • Core processing happens locally on your device. • Friction does not collect personal information for its core functionality. • No remote user profiles are created. • User information is not stored on external servers. • User data is not sold or shared with third parties. • Accessibility and app usage information are processed locally to provide digital wellbeing features. PERMISSIONS Accessibility Service Used to detect when selected applications are opened and display intervention screens. Accessibility information is processed locally and is not transmitted to external services. Usage Access Used to determine active applications and provide usage insights and focus-related functionality. Display Over Other Apps Used to display intervention screens and focus prompts when restricted applications are opened. VPN Service — Network Pace Friction uses Android’s VpnService API to slow network access for apps selected by the user. It creates a local, on-device VPN tunnel and applies the configured speed limit without routing traffic through a remote VPN server. Friction does not inspect, log, collect, sell, or share network traffic or browsing history. VpnService is used only for the Network Pace digital wellbeing feature and can be enabled or disabled at any time. USER CONTROL You remain in control of your experience. Applications can be added to or removed from restrictions at any time. Settings can be changed according to your preferences, and locally stored usage information can be cleared from within the application.