Frequently asked questions

The Android app and this site are provided as-is during early availability. Pricing, if any, will be stated clearly before you pay. Enforcement features do not require a subscription to operate locally on device.

Accessibility service (to detect marked apps), display over other apps (grainy grey overlay), device administrator (anti-tamper), battery exemption, and optionally write secure settings for system grayscale. Each permission maps to a concrete enforcement mechanism. Full breakdown: Permissions. Setup order is on the Help page.

The Window is your daily maintenance period — the only time you may change The Vig, The Pass, launch hold, relaunch period, The Lock, marked lists, and permissions. While it is open, enforcement stands down and the app is fully editable. When it closes, terms lock until the next scheduled window (or until setup grace lets you open early in the first three days). Full tutorial — schedules, Show week, Close Window

During The Window, yes — maintenance hours are for rule changes and escape hatches. Outside The Window, uninstall and tamper screens are blocked while enforcement is armed. See the The Window tutorial for schedules and Close Window behavior. Emergency recovery via ADB is documented in Help.

The Tab is active session debt — time you are spending or have spent in a marked app during a run. Collection is stacked penalty debt you owe before normal access returns, including The Vig markup on accumulated time. While collection debt is active, marked apps are locked out.

Marked apps block. Not a banner — a lockout. Try to open one during penalty and the Guillotine sends you home. The screen may go grayscale with a grainy grey overlay until you pay down collection or wait out the penalty.

Limited daily exemptions. You must type a confirmation phrase to take one. The Pass buys temporary relief; it does not erase history and it does not reset the ledger silently.

A mandatory countdown before a marked app opens. Default floor is twenty seconds. Use it to break autopilot or walk away before debt on The Tab starts.

Pocket-send / pocket-dial protection — safety, not focus debt. Opening Phone, WhatsApp / Signal / Telegram (and similar messaging), or SMS shows a full-screen overlay. Slide once to use that app for about a minute. Leaving or waking the phone does not cancel that grace. Pocketing (proximity) cancels all grace immediately. Incoming calls are never locked. Holding the phone to your ear during a call does not re-arm. Runs even while The Window or The Pass is active. Arm or disarm per category (phone, messaging, SMS) in Settings during The Window.

Yes — that is supported. The Vig targets active doomscrolling (screen on, app in use), not background listening. While your display is off, debt on The Tab for hard-marked apps such as YouTube does not keep running — audiobooks, podcasts, music, and YouTube Premium audio-only playback with the phone locked are fine. A few seconds of debt on The Tab from before you locked the screen is possible; hours of background audio do not stack debt. When the screen is on and you are in the app, debt on The Tab accrues normally.

Penalty state degrades the display: system grayscale plus a grainy grey overlay while enforcement is active. Lockout is the enforcement; the overlay is the texture. Sensory friction, not punishment theater.

It runs a background service and a periodic watchdog to ensure you do not bypass enforcement. When idle or screen off, battery draw is negligible (under 1–2% per day). When penalty overlays, grain, or countdowns are rendering, GPU/CPU overhead increases. However, because the system is designed to force you off your device, if your overall screen-on time drops dramatically — your phone's battery will last longer in practice.

No — not for enforcement. The Tab, Collection, marked apps, The Window, launch settings, and the full ledger stay on your phone. Nothing from day-to-day app use is uploaded to our servers.

Only The Web in-app browser. New hosts are checked against a public domain mega-list (host only). When a page still needs AI review, the app may send the page URL, title, a short text excerpt, and referrer to thevig.eu; our servers may forward that material to DeepSeek. Pages with password fields are blocked locally and are not uploaded. Before the browser opens, the app shows a warning with Accept or Reject; your device id, choice, and timestamp are logged. See Terms of use section 7.

Two stages. First, The Web calls Urlgate’s Navigate API : YouTube/Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo are rewritten to forced-safe hosts, and anything with time-waste score > 6 (adult, gambling, chat, and similar) is hard-blocked before the page loads. Score 6 (typically social) gets a short visit — about three pages — then a session lock. Score below 6 loads normally; AI spot-checks in parallel and only session-locks when your trail shows a real binge, not a one-off errand. Whitelisted domains skip both stages.

Core enforcement runs on device. This website and any future cloud features require network access separately.

Wait out the penalty, use The Pass if one remains, or follow the emergency ADB procedure on the Help page. The app assumes you read that before arming enforcement.