radialtimers.com
Four 45 minute blocks off the feed, with a 5 minute check-in between, advancing on their own. Start it, put the phone face down, and go do something slow; the rings empty in silence, one chime opens each check-in, and another ends it.
Cold turkey tends to end at the first notification. A bounded check-in works with the itch instead of against it: whatever shows up mid-block can wait, because a window for it is already on the clock. Most feeds turn out to hold about five minutes of actual news; the other forty-five come back.
This page chains four 45 minute blocks off the feed with a 5 minute check-in after each of the first three, 195 minutes in all, ending on the fourth block. The blocks are named for what they are: "off the feed" and "check-in". A chime opens each check-in and another closes it, and the rings during a block go one every 2 minutes 15 seconds, quietly. The design assumes you will want to look at the phone, and gives that want a scheduled place instead of pretending it will not happen.
| Schedule | Setup | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Afternoon reset | This page as it is, 1 pm to 4:15 pm | A day that has already gone sideways |
| Evening | Two rounds, 7 pm to 8:35 pm, then phone on charge in another room | Getting to sleep without a screen in the last hour |
| Morning guard | One 1 hour timer before the first look at the phone | Starting the day with your own attention |
Change the round count in Cycles; two rounds is a good first attempt, and four is an afternoon.
The block is empty on purpose, and empty time is where the itch comes from, so fill it before you start. Pick one thing per block and write it down: a chapter, a walk, a job around the house, an actual piece of work, a call to someone. Slow things work better than stimulating ones; a game on the same phone is not off the feed. Keep a scrap of paper for anything you think of that "needs" the phone, and deal with the list in the check-in.
Five minutes is enough to clear the notifications that were real, reply to one person, and see that nothing happened. It is not enough to open the feed and scroll, and that is the point: watch the dial in the check-in, because a ring falls every 15 seconds there and the chime that closes it is non-negotiable. Put the phone down at the sound even mid-post. The second check-in is easier than the first.
When 45 minutes feels easy, edit the cycle to 60/5 or 90/5; the 90 minute timer is the plain-block version. For work rather than a detox, the 50/10 pomodoro has the same shape with a rest that is a rest. The guide on focus sprints and deep work covers what to do with the attention once it comes back.
Long enough off the feed for your attention to settle, short enough to be believable on a first try. The check-in has edges: it opens with a chime and closes with one. Stretch the blocks or add rounds in Cycles once it starts feeling easy.
No. The countdown follows the clock in a background tab and the chime carries. Put the phone in another room if that helps; the dial is the one screen that never scrolls.
It gives the next few hours a shape. A feed is open-ended by design; a block with a visible end and a scheduled look at the phone removes the just-one-more negotiation. What you do off the feed is yours: a walk, a chapter, actual work.
Add it as a browser source in OBS; the background stays transparent. Change t for any length.
A radial timer is a free online countdown timer you set in one click: pick a length, press Start, and an alarm sounds at zero. Run several timers at once, take one fullscreen, or pop one out picture-in-picture to float over other apps. Every timer keeps counting in a background tab, and any timer exports as a video. No download, no sign-up.
Its dial draws the countdown as 20 concentric rings, one for each twentieth of the duration. Rings empty one by one, outermost first, so a glance shows how far along you are without reading a digit.
Yes. The countdown follows the clock, so it stays on time while you work in another tab and still chimes at zero. The picture-in-picture popout keeps a small dial in view the whole way.
Yes. Any timer exports as an MP4 or a transparent WebM of the whole countdown, up to 4K and 60 fps, in 16:9, vertical, or square.
Yes. In OBS, add a browser source pointing at radialtimers.com/overlay?t=25m and a transparent dial counts down over your scene. Change t for any length, like 90s or 3h.
As many as you need. Each timer gets its own dial and runs on its own, which suits interval workouts, several dishes on the stove, or a room of activity stations.