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The iPhone app that makes Instagram, TikTok & Reddit boring.

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01Escalation

It gets worse. On purpose.

  1. Dopaminedfull color
  2. Flat Graygrayscale
  3. Dull Dimmedbelow minimum brightness
  4. Nuclearcolors inverted

02Diff

You've tried the other way. It didn't work.

them
uglify
“Ignore Limit.” You tap it on autopilot.
No “Ignore” button. The screen just gets worse.
Hard lockout. You override. Feel worse.
Nothing is locked. The feed just goes gray.
Grayscale toggle. Adapted in a week.
Three tiers, stacking. Your brain never catches up.

03Research

38 minutes a day. Just from going gray.

38min / day

less screen time with grayscale alone, in a peer-reviewed study of 161 students. An independent 2023 study found 20 minutes less.

“Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.”— Aza Raskin, inventor of infinite scroll, BBC Panorama (2018)

Holte & Ferraro, 2020 · Dekker & Baumgartner, 2024

Colors come back. Sound doesn't.

Leave the app and the screen returns to normal — but the phone stays muted. Reaching for the volume button is one second of awareness you can feel in your hand.

Optional: switch on “Mute in tiers” in Settings.

04Install

Keep the app. Drain the dopamine.

Apple doesn't let apps touch your screen filters. Its own Shortcuts can. So Uglify sets up your first Shortcuts with you, right inside onboarding. On iOS 27 that's three switches, then a live test that proves they fire.

The actual app. A real day, counted.

  1. 01

    Pick the apps you can't quit.

    Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and six more. 15 free minutes a day, then the slide starts.

  2. 02

    Add three Shortcuts.

    iOS 27: the automations come built in, just switch them on. Earlier iOS: build two automations, every tap shown.

  3. 03

    Watch it fire once.

    Setup ends with a live test. Escape hatch: Settings → Restore my screen.

iPhone · iOS 18.2+ · free to start · no account · no ads · no VPN

Built for brains that can't just put the phone down.

No streaks. No shame. No willpower required. The feed goes flat and you put it down — not because you decided to, but because there's nothing left worth watching.

Get Uglify

The mechanism is free, forever · No account · Screen-time data stays on your phone · iPhone, iOS 18.2+

Frequently asked.

Nothing is blocked. The feed goes gray, then dim, then inverted. At each new level a shield closes the app once — reopen it and keep going if you want. You decide when to leave. DMs still work. Notifications still work.
It runs on iOS Shortcuts, Apple's own automation system. Once your daily free time is spent, opening a monitored app makes a Shortcut turn on built-in accessibility features — Color Filters, Reduce White Point, Classic Invert — escalating as your time in those apps adds up. Muting the sound is optional. No VPN. No device management profile. No sketchy permissions.
Partly, yes — that's hedonic adaptation, and it's exactly why the experience escalates. Grayscale first, then the screen dims, then the colors invert. The target keeps moving, so your brain never settles into it.
It was designed for brains like yours. No streaks. No shame. No reliance on willpower. Automatic environmental friction so your brain doesn't have to fight alone.
Your screen time data never leaves your iPhone. There's no account, no cloud sync, no ads, and nothing is ever sold. The app sends anonymous usage statistics — a random ID and events like “reached tier 2” — so we can tell which parts of the app work. No personal data, EU servers, and you can switch it off in Settings.
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Threads and Pinterest. You pick which ones Uglify watches; your free time is shared across them, so switching apps doesn't reset it. Everything else stays in full color.
The thing that makes your feed ugly is free, forever — every tier, every supported app, no trial, no account. Uglify Pro adds detailed analytics and custom escalation timing for $4.99/month or $29.99/year. You never need it for the app to work.
A few minutes, once. Apple doesn’t let apps change your screen filters, so Uglify works through Apple’s own Shortcuts and sets them up with you inside the app. On iOS 27 you add three Shortcuts and switch them on — their automations come built in. On iOS 18–26 you also build two automations, with every tap shown on the real screens. Setup ends with a live test, then it runs on its own.

Field notes

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