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The iPhone app that makes Instagram, TikTok & Reddit boring.

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01Escalation

It gets worse. On purpose.

  1. Dopaminedfull color
  2. Flat Graygrayscale · sound off
  3. Dull Dimmedbelow minimum brightness
  4. Nuclearcolors inverted

02Diff

You've tried the other way. It didn't work.

them
Time Limit
You've reached your limit for today.
uglify
“Ignore Limit.” You tap it on autopilot.
No button. The screen just gets worse.
Hard lockout. You override. Feel worse.
Nothing is locked. The feed is just gray and quiet.
Grayscale toggle. Adapted in a week.
Three tiers, stacking. Your brain never catches up.

03Research

38 minutes a day. Just from going gray.

38min / day

less screen time with grayscale alone. Peer-reviewed, 161 participants — and independently replicated a year later.

“These systems are designed to be addictive because there is so much economic pressure put on these companies to have you stick around.”— Aza Raskin, inventor of infinite scroll

Holte & Ferraro, 2020 · Dekker & Baumgartner, 2024

Colors come back. Sound doesn't.

Leave the app and the screen returns to normal — but the phone stays muted. Reaching for the volume button is one second of awareness you can feel in your hand.

04Install

Be honest: 4 minutes of the hardest app setup you've ever done.

You'll add three Shortcuts and build two automations, guided screen by screen — Apple doesn't let apps do that part for you.

The actual app. A real day, counted.

  1. 01

    Pick your apps, set your time.

    Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit. Default: 15 minutes.

  2. 02

    Build two automations.

    Every tap shown on the real iOS screens. No VPN, no profiles.

  3. 03

    Watch it fire once.

    Setup ends by confirming it works. Escape hatch: triple-click the side button.

iPhone · iOS 18.2+ · free to start · no account · no ads

Built for brains that can't just put the phone down.

No streaks. No shame. No willpower required. The feed goes flat and you put it down — not because you decided to, but because there's nothing left worth watching.

Get Uglify

The mechanism is free, forever · No account · Screen-time data stays on your phone · iPhone, iOS 18.2+

Frequently asked.

Nothing is blocked. The feed goes gray and quiet. You decide when to leave. DMs still work. Notifications still work.
It runs on iOS Shortcuts, Apple's own automation system. When you open a monitored app, a Shortcut turns on built-in accessibility features — Color Filters, Reduce White Point, Classic Invert — and mutes the volume, escalating the longer you stay. No VPN. No device management profile. No sketchy permissions.
Partly, yes — that's hedonic adaptation, and it's exactly why the experience escalates. Grayscale and silence first, then the screen dims, then the colors invert. The target keeps moving, so your brain never settles into it.
It was designed for brains like yours. No streaks. No shame. No reliance on willpower. Automatic environmental friction so your brain doesn't have to fight alone.
Your screen time data never leaves your iPhone. There's no account, no cloud sync, no ads, and nothing is ever sold. The app sends anonymous usage statistics — a random ID and events like “reached tier 2” — so we can tell which parts of the app work. No personal data, EU servers, and you can switch it off in Settings.
The thing that makes your feed ugly is free, forever — every tier, every app, no trial, no account. Uglify Pro adds detailed analytics and custom escalation timing for $4.99/month or $29.99/year. You never need it for the app to work.
About four minutes. You'll add three Shortcuts and build two automations, and the app walks you through every tap with the real screens. Apple doesn't allow apps to create automations on your behalf, so this part is manual — once. After that it runs on its own.

Field notes

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