Intentional Phone usage through restricted App-Access (Intention-Groups)

[Flummic]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

I often pull out my phone with the clear intention of doing something (e.g. writing a note/texting a friend/looking for XY/locating a place, etc.), but time and time again I get distracted by other apps on the go and (almost) forget what my original intention was. So instead of simply pulling out my phone, opening the notes app and writing the note (intention), the process looks more like this:

• I pull out my phone
• Checking WhatsApp and Mail (because I have those icons on my home screen)
• I wonder what my original intention was when I pulled out the phone.
• I remember that I wanted to write a quick note and do so (ideally).

I think a lot of people experience this to some extent. They want to use the phone as a tool to perform a specific action (intention), but along the way they get distracted by the many options the phone offers (apps to scroll through, maybe notifications, default actions you unconsciously perform such as checking email repeatedly, etc.).

Describe the solution you'd like

I would love to have some additional guardrails to help us be more intentional with our phone usage. If I was a handyman and want to solve a problem (intention), I would go to my toolbox, pick a tool, use it and return it once I'm done.

In a similar fashion, my proposed Solution to help enforce a similar workflow (for those who want it), would be to:

1. Ask the users for their intention (directly after unlocking the phone or even from the lock-screen)
2. Only show (and allow access to) apps that fit that intention (specified by the user in a prior setup process - see my propsed process below)
3. The user acts upon his intention and only gets access to other apps after either locking and unlocking the phone again (starting with a new intention) or declaring his original intention (specified in Step 1) as completed.

This solution would make it a lot easier to stick to the original intention of using the phone, because the user won't even be presented with all the other options that could act as a distraction.

The setup to categorize apps according to specific "intentions" (phone use-cases) could look something like this:

1. Let the user define the base-level-apps that will always show up (no matter which intention is set) - something like camera, phone, contacts, Password-Manager etc. (apps that are unlikely to distract and useful/neccessarry in almost any szenario)
2. Let the user group apps into "Intention-Bundles" like Notetaking (e.g. Obsidian, Google Keep, Todoist etc.), Communication (e.g. Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegramm, Signal etc.), Social-Media (e.g. Instagram, Facebook etc.), Entertainment (e.g. YouTube, Twitch, Netflix etc.), Navigation (e.g. Maps, TripAdvisor etc.), Finance (e.g. Banking-Apps, Mail, etc.) and so on
3. The groups can of course always be edited later on to adjust them to everyday life :)

I am aware that this is probably not a very simple request, but I believe it fits well with the theme of "digital wellbeing" and "intentional phone use" that Niagara Launcher is pursuing (which I love by the way)! I would love to hear back from you! Anyways, keep up the great work!

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