Screen time app for ADHD-friendly friction
Most screen-time apps treat a distracted open as a discipline problem. For people with ADHD, that framing usually fails — willpower in the impulse moment is exactly the thing that's hard. Zenvi is built around a different idea: put a small, finite challenge in the way before the app opens, so the impulse has somewhere to go.
Why time limits and stat dashboards often miss
A daily time limit kicks in after the impulse already won. A weekly screen-time graph is mostly shame fuel. Neither helps in the second between "I'm bored" and the home screen of Instagram. The point of intervention has to be there, not later.
What ADHD-friendly friction looks like
- Short. 5–15 seconds. Long enough to break the reflex, short enough not to provoke rage-quit.
- Novel. Same challenge every time becomes invisible. Rotate or use adaptive difficulty.
- Slightly engaging. A math sprint or memory pattern engages just enough working memory to interrupt the loop. A static "wait 10 seconds" screen often doesn't.
- Not punishing. No shame language, no streak guilt, no graphs of how badly you did today.
- Reversible. If a rule is wrong for today, you can change it without dismantling your whole setup.
How Zenvi maps to that list
- 20+ challenge types so the friction stays novel.
- Adaptive difficulty for math and memory.
- Calming, non-shaming block screens with custom intentions.
- System-level blocking via Apple's Screen Time API — fast, no VPN drain.
- Optional Strict Mode (Pro) for the days you want a harder commitment, and a free tier for the days you want a softer one.
Honest scope
Zenvi is not a medical device, not an ADHD treatment, and not a substitute for clinical care. We say so because it would be unhelpful and dishonest to imply otherwise. Zenvi is a friction layer that some people with ADHD find useful for impulse control around distracting apps — and that's genuinely useful, but it's a piece, not the whole picture.