FocusNPlay is an app designed for students and anyone serious about cutting screen time without relying on pure willpower. With Study to Scroll and AI-Powered flashcard generation, instead of simply blocking apps, it turns every unblock into a study opportunity — review flashcards before allowed to scroll again, so that time wasted becomes time spent learning. The effectiveness is unmatched by any apps on the market that claims to reduce your screentime, without forming long-lasting habits.
📱 Being stuck in the world of distractions has never felt this suffocating. Thanks to doomscrolling, we now spend 5 hours on the phone everyday, doing nothing else during those hours. That's 1825 hours wasted per year!
Since I was also a victim of the very screen that I own, I've been working on the most effective way to curb phone addictions that is guaranteed to work.
So last year, after spending a little over 9 months into development, I published FocusNPlay 1.0, an app that blocks and unblocks apps in endless loops of Pomodoro intervals.
Personally, it worked... for the first 2 weeks. My screentime went down by a lot after the implementation. But because the mechanism didn't quite bake into my habits, and the fact that I had to wait till the bloody blocking period ends, I couldn't bear with it anymore. Before long my doomscrolling habits crept back, and my screentime rebounded.
But FocusNPlay 1.0 was already equipped with something powerful - Phase Timer - that could block apps in intervals, allowing you to focus at peak in bursts. All I need is a kicker to it - something that's more long-lasting, less frustrating, and easy to form habit from. To find out how, I tapped into our psychology as users.
🧠 Our brains know what's clearly harmful or beneficial to us. Doomscroll, bad. Study, good. And yet, we kept scrolling for no reason. More worryingly, is that even with many tools available nowadays that could block our apps, none of them work - because what almost all of them do is blocking your apps with a jarring splash-screen, and it's no wonder that people quit in less than 2 weeks.
In other words, we need an approach that doesn't barricade the joy of scrolling entirely out of the blue, because our brains might not like it.
🛠️ So in this re-launch, I'm thrilled to announce the feature that is going to change the concept of app blocking entirely - Study to Scroll. Here's how it works:
Start the Phase Timer & let it run in background. Return to your life as usual.
Scroll for a while. Until... UH OH! Time's up! Apps are blocked!
But wait! You now have a choice to unblock your apps early by studying a few flashcards.
(Repeat)
Now this approach shows great amount of flexibility. You'd no longer find it stressful when your apps are blocked.
Most importantly, you are starting to treat scrolling as something that needs to be earned. Want to scroll a little longer? Learn a few more Spanish words first, perhaps? Or wait just a little longer. After all, do you really need to scroll that badly?
As a personal experiment, I also applied this approach on learning as many new Japanese vocabs and grammar in 30 days to see if it really works. And it did so well, I was able to pass the exam. This is because the knowledge accumulated so fast due to the frequency of me taking out my phone, I simply couldn’t stop reviewing flashcards!
Study to Scroll spreads out the study sessions into smaller, digestible chunks. Exerting less stress on your study and helping you to learn more without burning out. Replacing screen time with more useful studying.
So yes. I finally made an app that truly cuts your screen time down and help you learn more, by combining app-blocking with flashcards...
… and AI Flashcard Generation. Yes, I almost forgot. That's also quite a big deal 😂. But that’d take me another hour to type all the details. In short, this feature allows you to craft new study materials (into fine flashcards) instantly so that you don’t have to spend time creating them one-by-one.
Anyways, I’m super excited to re-launch this app, and I'm also planning to add more ground-breaking features to it, like flashcard syncing, contextual learning, and more. But I really need your support to get there!
💬 If you want to get first-hand updates on new features, dev discussions, and Pro membership deals, join the Discord server.
The app is free for anyone who starts using, including Study to Scroll. For heavy users - Pro offer advanced features like Stricter Measures, expanded flashcard storage & AI quotas, as well as a Pro badge and fun themes.
📢 Feel free to ask anything in the comment section, and I will respond to each of them.
No comment highlights available yet. Please check back later!
About FocusNPlay on Product Hunt
“No doomscrolling! Distractions are blocked until you study.”
FocusNPlay was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 0 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #579 on the daily leaderboard. FocusNPlay is an app designed for students and anyone serious about cutting screen time without relying on pure willpower. With Study to Scroll and AI-Powered flashcard generation, instead of simply blocking apps, it turns every unblock into a study opportunity — review flashcards before allowed to scroll again, so that time wasted becomes time spent learning. The effectiveness is unmatched by any apps on the market that claims to reduce your screentime, without forming long-lasting habits.
FocusNPlay was featured in Android (57.1k followers), Productivity (649.7k followers), Education (78.4k followers) and Artificial Intelligence (466.2k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 278.6k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted FocusNPlay?
FocusNPlay was hunted by Mart Wu. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how FocusNPlay stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Mart Wu
👋 Hello Hunters.
Thanks for joining the re-launch of FocusNPlay.
📱 Being stuck in the world of distractions has never felt this suffocating. Thanks to doomscrolling, we now spend 5 hours on the phone everyday, doing nothing else during those hours. That's 1825 hours wasted per year!
Since I was also a victim of the very screen that I own, I've been working on the most effective way to curb phone addictions that is guaranteed to work.
So last year, after spending a little over 9 months into development, I published FocusNPlay 1.0, an app that blocks and unblocks apps in endless loops of Pomodoro intervals.
Personally, it worked... for the first 2 weeks. My screentime went down by a lot after the implementation. But because the mechanism didn't quite bake into my habits, and the fact that I had to wait till the bloody blocking period ends, I couldn't bear with it anymore. Before long my doomscrolling habits crept back, and my screentime rebounded.
But FocusNPlay 1.0 was already equipped with something powerful - Phase Timer - that could block apps in intervals, allowing you to focus at peak in bursts. All I need is a kicker to it - something that's more long-lasting, less frustrating, and easy to form habit from. To find out how, I tapped into our psychology as users.
🧠 Our brains know what's clearly harmful or beneficial to us. Doomscroll, bad. Study, good. And yet, we kept scrolling for no reason. More worryingly, is that even with many tools available nowadays that could block our apps, none of them work - because what almost all of them do is blocking your apps with a jarring splash-screen, and it's no wonder that people quit in less than 2 weeks.
In other words, we need an approach that doesn't barricade the joy of scrolling entirely out of the blue, because our brains might not like it.
🛠️ So in this re-launch, I'm thrilled to announce the feature that is going to change the concept of app blocking entirely - Study to Scroll. Here's how it works:
Start the Phase Timer & let it run in background. Return to your life as usual.
Scroll for a while. Until... UH OH! Time's up! Apps are blocked!
But wait! You now have a choice to unblock your apps early by studying a few flashcards.
(Repeat)
Now this approach shows great amount of flexibility. You'd no longer find it stressful when your apps are blocked.
Most importantly, you are starting to treat scrolling as something that needs to be earned. Want to scroll a little longer? Learn a few more Spanish words first, perhaps? Or wait just a little longer. After all, do you really need to scroll that badly?
As a personal experiment, I also applied this approach on learning as many new Japanese vocabs and grammar in 30 days to see if it really works. And it did so well, I was able to pass the exam. This is because the knowledge accumulated so fast due to the frequency of me taking out my phone, I simply couldn’t stop reviewing flashcards!
📖 Read more in this blog post: How I Memorized 2,000 Japanese Vocabs in 30 Days with Study to Scroll.
Study to Scroll spreads out the study sessions into smaller, digestible chunks. Exerting less stress on your study and helping you to learn more without burning out. Replacing screen time with more useful studying.
So yes. I finally made an app that truly cuts your screen time down and help you learn more, by combining app-blocking with flashcards...
… and AI Flashcard Generation. Yes, I almost forgot. That's also quite a big deal 😂. But that’d take me another hour to type all the details. In short, this feature allows you to craft new study materials (into fine flashcards) instantly so that you don’t have to spend time creating them one-by-one.
Anyways, I’m super excited to re-launch this app, and I'm also planning to add more ground-breaking features to it, like flashcard syncing, contextual learning, and more. But I really need your support to get there!
💬 If you want to get first-hand updates on new features, dev discussions, and Pro membership deals, join the Discord server.
The app is free for anyone who starts using, including Study to Scroll. For heavy users - Pro offer advanced features like Stricter Measures, expanded flashcard storage & AI quotas, as well as a Pro badge and fun themes.
📢 Feel free to ask anything in the comment section, and I will respond to each of them.
Thank you, and happy focusing.
Mart Wu