A minimal Android app that adds a short, timed pause before you open chosen apps. When you launch a selected app, the screen is covered by a panel with a countdown; only after it finishes can you choose Open anyway or Cancel. The pause screen also shows how many times you've opened that app in the last 24 hours and when you last opened it.
It uses an Accessibility Service to detect app launches and an accessibility overlay to draw the pause screen, so it needs no "draw over other apps" permission, and the app has no network access.
Check your phone first. Recent Android versions include this natively: Digital Wellbeing's app timers and Focus mode, and Android 17's Pause Point (a built-in delay before selected apps, on Pixel and Samsung). If your phone has those, prefer them. Pause is for older devices, custom ROMs, and phones that ship without Google's Digital Wellbeing.
nix develop # provides JDK 21 + Android SDK + Gradle
./gradlew assembleDebugThe APK is written to app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.
With the phone connected over USB (USB debugging enabled):
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk- Open Pause.
- Tap Enable accessibility access and turn on "Pause monitor" in the system settings. (On some phones this lives under Settings → Accessibility → Installed apps.)
- Back in the app, set the pause length and choose the apps you want to gate.
AppMonitorService: accessibility service; reacts to foreground-app changes and triggers the overlay for paused apps. A configurable per-app allow-window (default 5 min) after "Open anyway" avoids re-prompting that app during its session.InterventionOverlay: the full-screen cover. It covers the screen immediately, eases in a pulsing circle and countdown, then reveals the choice buttons; it slides back down on dismiss.Prefs: stores the paused-app set, pause length, the rolling 24h list of open attempts, and the per-app stats.MainActivity/AppsActivity/StatsActivity: settings (accessibility status, pause length, message, allow-window), the searchable app picker, and per-app stats.
Note: an accessibility-based gate is best-effort, not a hard block. It's designed to make impulsive opens deliberate, not to be tamper-proof.
MIT. See LICENSE.