Unplug Help Documentation

A complete guide to Unplug, from your first logged day to a finished plan.

Last Updated: November 11, 2026

1. Getting Started

Above the tool, a status line shows today's screen time against your aim, or the phone-down block while one runs. Next to it are the five views: Today, Your time, Your apps, Check and Plan, then Settings and How it works. Unplug opens on Your time. The round button at the top right switches the site between light and dark.

Unplug cannot see your phone: you type the numbers from your phone's own screen time report. To look around first, choose Try with example data in Settings.

2. Your Time

Type your age, the age you expect to live to (your own guess; 80 is only an example) and how many hours you sleep, then move Screen time a day, outside work to your daily average. Once you have logged three days or more, the slider starts from your recent average and a link offers to use it again after you move it.

The large line says how many years of the years you have left screens take at that rate, then the share of your waking hours and the number of weeks of whole days and nights. Below it, every week of a life is a square: grey for weeks lived, light for weeks ahead, purple for your screen hours put together at the end, green for what Take back each day returns, and a frame around this week. Hover or touch a square to see its age and week. If your age is at or past the age you expect to live to, Unplug asks you to change one of them instead of guessing.

3. What the Hours Could Be

The tiles show what the hours you take back, or all your screen time, could be each year or over the rest of your life: hours, books of about 300 pages (6 hours each), kilometres walked at 5 km an hour, a language close to English (700 hours of classes; the US Foreign Service Institute estimates 600 to 750), nights of 8 hours and evenings of 3 hours with people. With your take-home pay and working hours a month, a last tile shows what the same hours are worth at your pay. These are examples at the rates shown, not promises.

4. Logging a Day

On Today, type the day's screen time in hours and minutes, the pickups (unlocks) and the notifications, and if you like the time of your first look at the phone and how the day felt. Each box is saved as you type. On Android the numbers are in Settings, Digital Wellbeing and parental controls; on an iPhone in Settings, Screen Time, See All App and Website Activity, Day. Menu names differ a little between phones.

The arrows beside the date, the keys [ and ], or a tap on the date open another day; days in the future cannot be logged. Clear this day removes a day, with Undo for a few seconds.

5. The 30-Day Chart and Your Numbers

Next to the boxes, the day's screen time is set against the day's aim, with yesterday's for comparison. The readouts show the average of the last seven days and the change from the seven before (after two weeks of numbers), the days in a row within the aim with your best day lately, pickups a day and an hour awake, notifications a day, and phone-free time with the urges waited out in the last seven days. The chart draws the last 30 days as columns with the aim as a line; tap a column to open that day, or open Show the numbers for a table.

6. Your Apps

Add your three or four most used apps with the buttons for common apps or by typing a name. For each one, type the minutes a day and alerts a day from your phone's report (a week's figure divided by 7 is fairer), say how it usually leaves you feeling (Worse, No change, Better) and who sends its alerts (People or The app); for people, tick Needs a quick reply if it does. Minutes can be typed as 90, 1:30, 1h 30m or 1.5h. The trash button removes an app, with Undo.

Below the list, the strip places each app by minutes and feeling (bigger dots send more alerts), the readouts add up the time, the time in apps that leave you feeling worse, what the changes save and the alerts, and Your changes lists what to do, most time saved first. Put them in a plan starts the Plan view.

7. What Unplug Suggests for Each App

• Leaves you feeling worse: cut back to 40 percent of its time, at least 10 minutes, if you use it 20 minutes a day or more; otherwise remove it, or move it off the home screen.
• No change: a limit of 60 percent from 45 minutes a day.
• Better: kept, with a limit of 80 percent only from 2 hours a day.
• Alerts: from people who need a quick reply, kept; other people's messages, in a summary; alerts the app sends by itself, turned off (in a summary if the app leaves you feeling better).
• Limits are rounded to 5 minutes. An app you have not rated gets no suggestion and is not counted in the changes or the plan until you rate it.

8. The Check

The ten statements are the Smartphone Addiction Scale, short version (Kwon, Kim, Cho and Yang, PLoS ONE, 2013), worded for adults. Answer each for how things have been lately, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, with a click or the keys 1 to 6; Backspace or Back goes to the previous statement and Stop the check leaves it (your answers so far are kept until you start again). The result shows your total from 10 to 60, how it compares with your previous check, your answers strongest first, and the areas where a plan could start, from the statements you agreed with most.

The study set cut-offs of 31 for boys and 33 for girls among school students of about 14 in South Korea; there is no agreed cut-off for adults, so Unplug does not rate your score. It is a self-check, not a diagnosis. If your phone use worries you, talk to a doctor or a counsellor.

9. Making a Plan

On Plan, choose what to work on (suggestions come from your check and your apps), how long (7, 14, 21 or 30 days), when to start (today, tomorrow or next Monday) and the pace: gentle (one new step a day, 20 percent less screen time), steady (two a day, about a third less) or firm (three a day, harder steps sooner, half). Your screen time now starts from your logged average; the aim follows the pace until you type your own. Both take 4h 30m, 4h 30, 4:30 or 270. Make my plan builds it; a new plan replaces the current one after you confirm.

10. Following the Plan

Each day lists its new steps with a short how-to: set-ups you do once, habits you keep and one-day tries, plus a look back every seventh day and on the last day. Tick a step when it is done. Habits carry on under Keep going on the days after, with their own ticks. The swap button gives a different step of the same kind, no harder than that day allows, with Undo. The side panel shows the steps done so far, the aim against your logged screen time and the days within the aim. Today shows the same day's steps.

The day's aim comes down from your screen time now to your aim in steps of 5 minutes, reaching the aim 70 percent of the way through and staying there; it never goes above where you started or below your aim.

11. Calendar, Print and Copy

Add to calendar saves a calendar file with one all-day entry for each day of the plan: the first new step as its title, and the aim, the new steps and the habits to keep going in its notes. Calendar apps on phones and computers open it. Print prints the plan with a box for each step, and Copy copies it as plain text.

12. Putting the Phone Down

Press Put the phone down on Today, or one of the quick lengths under Phone-free time, choose 15 minutes to 2 hours or Until I stop, press Start and lock the phone. A black screen shows the time left (or the time so far) and when it ends. The block is counted from the clock, so it keeps counting with the screen off or the page closed; the close button only hides the screen. When a timed block ends, a soft chime plays if the page is in view. Stop ends a block early and counts the minutes so far. A block that runs past midnight counts on both days; an open block counts at most 12 hours; a block of less than a minute is not counted.

13. The Urge Pause

I want to check my phone, on Today or on the phone-down screen, shows a slow wave for 90 seconds: breathe in for 4 and out for 6 with it. Many people find an urge rises, peaks and eases like a wave. Afterwards, Keep the phone down counts an urge waited out for the day, and Check it closes the pause; either way you return to a running block. For more breathing techniques, see Prana Breathing Exercises on this site.

14. Settings, Example Data and Backups

• Daily aim: the aim on days without a plan, typed as 3h, 2h 30m or 150.
• Try with example data (when nothing is logged): 24 days, six apps and a check to look around with; the banner's Clear it and start with mine removes them.
• Save a backup saves a file with everything; Restore a backup reads one back after you confirm and checks each value.
• Delete everything removes all of Unplug's data from this browser after you confirm.

15. Keyboard and Accessibility

• 1 to 5 switch views, [ and ] go to the day before and after on Today, 1 to 6 answer during the check and Backspace goes back, Esc closes a window.
• The keys work while the tool is in use, not while you type in a box or a window is open. The arrow keys move between the views when one is focused.
• Tab reaches every button and box. The charts and the grid of weeks are described in words for screen readers, the tables that scroll sideways can be reached with Tab, and changes such as a finished check are announced.
• With reduced motion turned on in your device, the grid appears without filling in and the urge wave does not ripple.

16. Privacy and Your Data

Your logged days, apps, check answers, plan and phone-free time are kept in this browser under one entry for this tool and never sent to a server; nothing is saved on a first visit until you type, pick or start something. Data from the earlier Unplug app is brought over once. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, this page shows ads; the Privacy Policy explains them.

17. How It Was Checked

Before this page was published, the engine behind the tool was checked against references written from the rules on this page: 75,570 cases in 13 groups, each run in two time zones. They include typed times and minutes as text, the years left for thousands of ages, the check's totals and areas, the suggestions and totals for thousands of app lists, three thousand plans (one step at a time, levels, habits, tries, reviews, aims and swaps), the averages, streaks and best days of a log, the calendar file against the calendar standard (line ends, line lengths in bytes, escaping, dates and unique entries), phone-down blocks across midnight and summer time, and three thousand saved states, most of them made to break the tool. Then the page was tried at four screen widths in both themes.

18. Troubleshooting

• My numbers are gone. They are kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts afresh. Save a backup now and then.
• The years look wrong. Check the age, the age you expect to live to and the sleep hours; the screen time slider is your time outside work.
• An app has no suggestion. Say how it leaves you feeling on its row.
• The phone-down chime did not play. It plays only when the block ends while the page is in view; the minutes are counted either way.
• The calendar file opened as text. Open it with your calendar app, or import it in the calendar's settings.
• A banner says Unplug cannot save. The browser blocks saving for this site; the tool still works until you close the page.

19. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form.