I built the thing I needed.
Moth started the way a lot of change does: with a number I didn't want to see.
The lamp
I realised I was wasting too much of my life on my phone. Not a minute here and there — hours. When I finally measured it against the limit I'd set myself, I was 55 hours over in a single month. That's more than a full work week, gone to the feed.
Nothing quite worked
I wasn't the only one. Friends were fighting the same thing, and nothing seemed to stick. Some deleted Instagram or TikTok — the urge went away, but so did the group chats, the plans and the photos from people they actually cared about. Others went cold turkey and binged harder a week later.
I tried the apps that promise to help. Timers you tap straight past. Blockers that treat every minute the same. Guilt with no direction. None of them fit what I wanted.
So I built it
I built what I wanted, and gave it to my friends who were struggling too. They saw a difference within days.
My time over my scroll-time goal: 55 hours in a month, then just over 1.5 hours in total the next month.
Where my friends' Focus Scores started, in the 20s and 30s — and where they were within a week.
Turning the pull around
Social media is built to keep you. Streaks you don't want to break. Numbers that only go up. Levels, rewards that arrive just often enough, friends watching. It's very good at pulling you away from your life and the people in it.
I took those same mechanics apart and pointed them the other way. Moth uses what makes technology addictive to get you hooked on not using your phone — and on the things you'd rather be doing: learning a language, playing an instrument, reading a book, or just getting more active every day.
- A streak for every day you stay inside your scroll time.
- A score that climbs when you live more and scroll less.
- Friends who cheer each other's Focus Scores, not feeds that pull you in.
- Goals that collect the hours you win back — and track how far you've come.
- A pause before every open, so the habit has to ask first.
The moon
Moth won't take your phone away. It tracks your progress, and more importantly it shows you when you're wasting valuable time living as if the lamp were the moon — what the time cost you, in money and in the goals you care about — and it makes the moon worth flying toward.
“You pity the moth confusing a lamp for the moon, yet here you are confusing a screen for the world.”
— Peter, who built Moth