TL;DR — PhoneDown is a $9 one-time macOS app that uses your Mac's camera to notice when you reach for your phone, then nudges you. Everything runs on-device. No subscription, no cloud, no recording. Built solo because nothing else worked on me.
Who built it
I'm Madhur Shrimal. I've spent about a decade writing software for big platforms and small ones. I make a few small things on the side — VoxBee for on-device dictation, How Real Is Your Food for less-processed eating, and Headroom for tracking Claude Code / Codex usage limits.
Find me on X or email [email protected].
Why PhoneDown exists
Every productivity app I tried had the same flaw: it lived on the same device I was trying to escape. Screen-time limits ask you to negotiate with yourself in the moment of weakness. Phone lockboxes are theatre — the phone is right there, you'll just retrieve it. App blockers are easy to bypass and easier to ignore.
What actually works is friction at the moment of reaching, from a system that has no skin in the game and no way to be argued with. Your Mac's camera is in a perfect position to see your hands. So I built a tiny menu-bar app that watches for one specific gesture — your hand near your phone — and quietly increments a counter every time it happens. The shame of the counter is the feature.
What's in the box
- Camera-based phone detection. Apple's Vision framework, on-device, low-priority queue. Lighter than a browser tab.
- Menu-bar nudge counter. Resets at midnight. Hideable.
- Pause for life. Hard stop for calls, photos, the meeting where you actually need your phone.
- External-camera support. Pick which webcam in settings.
- Free updates forever. Sparkle delivers them; you do nothing.
What's NOT in the box
- No cloud. Camera frames go from the sensor into the detector and are immediately discarded. Nothing is stored, nothing is uploaded.
- No tracking inside the app. No analytics SDK in the binary. The website uses Google Analytics; the app does not.
- No AI training on your data. Nothing leaves your Mac, so nothing is available to train on.
- No subscription. One price, forever. We'd be embarrassed to charge you monthly to put your phone down.
- No iOS app. A "stop using your phone" iPhone app would be funny but counterproductive.
The rules I won't break
- Camera data never leaves your Mac.
- No subscription pricing. Ever.
- If it doesn't work for you, I refund you within 14 days, no forms.
That's the whole thing. Buy it, read the blog, or email me.