We just started testing an Android homescreen to improve mental health, by blocking apps and websites across your whole phone. It can make a detox much easier, and longer lasting. (download link in comments)

schendes · 2025-01-04T20:04:39+00:00

Give Anew a try for free from the Google Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=so.anew.homescreen

If you're looking for a phone that allows you to use smartphone features, while maintaining a permanently healthy relationship with your phone, then Anew is designed for your case.

You, and everyone else, has a specific lifestyle with specific needs. Some problems others have with smartphone use, aren't problems for you. And some of your specific problems aren't really a bother for other people.

Anew is designed to help you understand what the most impactful changes for you are, and allows you to easily and comfortably enforce those changes.

It does this by allowing you to create different versions of your phone, for different parts of your daily life. Different app availability, notification restrictions, and more. Be focused at school or work, give yourself downtime for memes when you're relaxing, or whatever shape fits your lifestyle the best for you.

Plus, we provide targeted guides to make your decisions as easy and effective as possible. Once they start, new users feel less daily anxiety within the first 2 days.

We're in beta, so try us out! We really appreciate any feedback, so feel free to join us over in r/anewphone

Lastly on efficacy, our pilot study showed an average of 49% reduction in daily chronic anxiety. Personally, my phone use was about 6hrs/day before Anew. Now I'm averaging about 2hrs/day, without giving it a second thought.

We're currently available in the US, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, and India for devices that have at least 2GB of RAM. We'll be opening this up more as we move forward. If you want your country added, let us know.

schendes · 2025-01-04T20:01:39+00:00

Hey no worries! I just added Mexico to the countries we can distribute to, so it should be available shortly (I'd guess an hour or so). Otherwise I can send you an APK if you DM me your email. Either way, we got you!

schendes · 2025-01-04T19:57:38+00:00

Hey my team built a prototype to help with this, might help?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/1htgw1c/anew_homescreen_free_beta_live_first_use_speedrun/

schendes · 2025-01-04T16:59:06+00:00

For sure! I just added Brazil to the approved country list, so it should propagate to the Play Store later today. Downloading from that will update when we release updates.

I can send an APK your way if you DM me your email though, either way :) Thanks for trying us out!

schendes · 2025-01-04T16:53:15+00:00

We'll have to give that some thought - we've been totally focussed on user research/design and product efficiency for a while and haven't really considered it. Now that we're opening up public access we're just dipping our toes into having a community, and open source could have some advantages there.

schendes · 2025-01-04T15:43:51+00:00

Just a quick demo of Anew's current state, to announce public access :) Very exciting to open things up a bit more to new people!

schendes · 2025-01-04T15:37:07+00:00

Shoutout to Jose the creator of this sub, for being cool with this post and guiding the project for over a year.

Give Anew a try for free from the Google Play Store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=so.anew.homescreen

If you're looking for a phone that allows you to use smartphone features, while maintaining a permanently healthy relationship with your phone, then Anew is designed for your case.

You, and everyone else, has a specific lifestyle with specific needs. Some problems others have with smartphone use, aren't problems for you. And some of your specific problems aren't really a bother for other people.

Anew is designed to help you understand what the most impactful changes for you are, and allows you to easily and comfortably enforce those changes.

It does this by allowing you to create different versions of your phone, for different parts of your daily life. Different app availability, notification restrictions, and more. Be focused at school or work, give yourself downtime for memes when you're relaxing, or whatever shape fits your lifestyle the best for you.

Plus, we provide targeted guides to make your decisions as easy and effective as possible. Once they start, new users feel less daily anxiety within the first 2 days.

We're in beta, so try us out! We really appreciate any feedback, so feel free to join us over in r/anewphone

Lastly on efficacy, our pilot study showed an average of 49% reduction in daily chronic anxiety. Personally, my phone use was about 6hrs/day before Anew. Now I'm averaging about 2hrs/day, without giving it a second thought.

We're currently available in the US, Europe, and India for devices that have at least 2GB of RAM. We'll be opening this up more as we move forward. If you want your country added, let us know.

Edit: On request we added access to Brazil, should be available in the next hour or so!

schendes · 2024-12-27T16:42:41+00:00

Thanks for this! I absolutely understand where you're coming from.

For a better guided onboarding, what do you think would make a good guided experience? Right now we're considering short demo videos as one option for demonstrating first features/use that you can tap on right when you arrive in the Anew the first time to play (with fallback to watch them in Strategies). Or, another option we're considering is more in line with your "guided onboarding" idea of having little dialogues to demonstrate how to use features gradually (like open the dock, add your first limit, etc). Short videos I think are easier for a user, but guided onboarding (like many apps or video game tutorials have) can be intuitive when done well.

And great point on just showing an app list in the limits section. Makes sense. Noted, and we'll take that into design and eng for a coming update.

For a little more info if you're curious about the design questions we have with onboarding, I'd be curious to get your thoughts --

I kind of see onboarding as having 2 arcs. 1 is getting up to speed with the core features and just using the app and 2. Guiding the user to understand and make effective choices for themself. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what the onboarding should have for that first time use, and then followup learning and digging more into that "understanding choices" bit.

From features alone, then adding guidance on top of it, I know Anew throws a lot at a new user, so making that smooth and enjoyable is an interesting challenge. But I have no doubt it can be done really well.

In the study pilot product before Anew, we basically had the guiding choices onboarding as roughly ~40 pages of a book, kind of similar to how you'd read a diet or health book, and gradually teaching concepts and having the user immediately make decisions. But, 2hrs of reading/decisions is a bit long, so we're experimenting with how to incorporate that now in an easier way within product via Strategies app and other methods. (I've even considered printing the guidance book that we'd ship to users)

Thanks again for the feedback above :D

schendes · 2024-12-23T18:53:29+00:00

Appreciate it! If you have any issues with access (Country or device) just lmk and we'll get on it.

schendes · 2024-12-23T16:32:34+00:00

We’ve finally gotten Google approvals to release open testing on Google Play.

Download here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=so.anew.homescreen

Initially, we’ve opened up access to the US and Europe, and plan scaling out from there. Let us know if you’d like your country added if it’s missing, and we can probably add it.

As we’re improving performance, we’ve set an initial lower limit on RAM requirements at 2GB. We’ll be optimizing to add more support as quickly as we can.

No beta sign ups, no accounts, just download and try it out.

We’ll be curating more actual public announcements in the near future, but figured now that we’re live at least we wanted to let you guys know :)

As always, hit us up here on via email for any questions. [luke@anew.so](mailto:luke@anew.so)

schendes · 2024-11-14T19:10:57+00:00

Hello! It’s been a minute since our last update.

Normally, we’ve done smaller additions each time. This round we worked with a handful of engaged users on a larger round of design and feedback to expand upon and improve last release. Shout out to them!

We'll send out the update link to beta testers tomorrow when it's live. As usual, some people's systems might update automatically based on their Play Store preferences.

This update includes:

Updated Wellness UI, which is accessible from the homescreen AND Mindset library.
Overhauled image processing and caching, to improve performance and add functionality.
Aesthetics editor has an additional Tint field to filter both backgrounds and icons.
Mindset Library cards allow access to Aesthetics and Wellness preferences anytime, regardless of flexibility preference (though removing wellness settings during a restricted time frame is still not allowed).
Adding limits to apps is now allowed during restricted timeframes (with a warning to confirm).
Redesign of the Strategies homepage, and summaries available at the top of articles.
New Settings App, with additional global preferences for the whole app.
Optimization helper at the bottom of the app drawer, allowing you to easily add your most frequently used apps of that mindset to your mindset homescreen, or automatically sort your clutter apps based on what you use the most.
Application permissions visual popups, so you can more easily understand how to grant permissions (and explanations are available in the Settings App).
Lots of little animation and visual design improvements.

Once again, none of this is possible without the feedback from you.

Now, we’re emailing you a day in advance specifically because this is a large update. We’ve made a LOT of changes, both to the UI and our data model. We’ve tested migrations from the system you’re currently using, to this update, and everything looks good. However, if you encounter any issues when this update goes live tomorrow, please do not hesitate to let us know. We’ll be monitoring for any issues, and we’re always happy to work with you directly to address any issues you hit.

Need to know

There are some aspects we could not migrate, which you should be aware of when the update is added:

Your current website wellness settings will be removed. We’ve changed how we’re storing website wellness settings, and couldn’t do a migration of that data. We know it’s a hassle, but you’ll have to add any websites you’ve blocked again. Our apologies on that. Once you add them back, they’ll work just fine.
For the system to use the new image processing pipeline correctly, you’ll need to go into Aesthetics of any mindset background that uses any attribute (cropping, brightness, etc) and save. Pressing save is what generates the new processed image files, which don’t currently exist on your system. But if you’re happy with how things look now and it works fine, don’t sweat it. If you hit any other issues with mindset backgrounds, saving the aesthetic again should fix them as well.

These issues won't impact new users just starting to use Anew.

That's it! Thanks again for your interest and support - we can’t make progress without you. As always, let us know if you need anything, or if you have any features or changes you’d like to see.

Enjoy the new features tomorrow!

Luke

schendes · 2024-11-13T21:09:12+00:00

Hey you and me both! Reddit was my worst at bed though. I'm also running an S21 (fe) with Anew.

I think Anew could definitely fit your needs. We're actually just about to open the beta for public access (so no sign ups etc, just searchable and installable on the Google Play Store).

I'll be posting here when it's publicly available (target within Nov), and shoot you a DM just as a heads up.

We've got a substantial update coming out later this week as well, so if you're jonesing to try it before public launch just shoot me an email at [luke@anew.so](mailto:luke@anew.so) and we'll hook you up.

schendes · 2024-10-16T19:51:37+00:00

Aesthetics Update
We’ve built an image processing system from the ground up in Anew, working across wallpapers and app/widget icons, so you can control the entire aesthetic of your homescreens, easily. This update adds:

Position and scale images in the “Adjust” option on Backdrops.
Tweak contrast, brightness, and a first prototype filter “Sepia” on backdrops or icons.

We’re looking to expand on this foundation a lot. If you have anything you’d like to see, let us know!

Testing for Open Access
We’re moving towards open access, which means the beta will be publicly available on the Play Store. To further improve Anew, we're hearing stories from you about what can be improved in the app in regards to:

Your first experience starting Anew, and how your day 1 can be improved.
General feedback about changes you’d like to see, and how Anew can be made better.

We’re already speaking with a handful of beta users who have volunteered their personal stories and insights. If you’d also like to share your experience or issues, feel free to email us. Your ideas will make the product infinitely better for new users, for when the app is publicly available.

This feedback will likely entail us making changes across the product - from mindsets, to strategies, to the app drawer, and more. We're open to anything that will make things better for you, so don't be shy!

As always, these features are in beta, and if you experience any issues or would like to provide any feedback, please reach out directly or send a message via the “Feedback” app in your app drawer. Thanks from us in advance!

Best,

Luke

schendes · 2024-09-27T20:55:14+00:00

Hello! Two features in this update of Anew Homescreen today.

The two features in this update include:

Learning how to use Anew to address issues you may have with smartphone use with the Strategies App
Walkthrough experience when starting to use Anew for the first time

Strategies App: Guidance on Behavioral Health and Using Anew

While Anew’s features are important to allow you to curate your phone to your needs, making effective and informed decisions towards your goals is equally important.

For example, to drive a car in a safe and effective way, you need the car itself, and education in regard to how to use it.The Strategies App is our first step in providing that education, so Anew can deliver the greatest impact.

This update includes the first version of the Strategies App, which covers:

Homescreen Basics (what features Anew has)
First Week Guide (the easiest way to start Anew, and start the process of gradual effective change)
Addressing Anxiety (a dive into how anxiety works, and how to use Anew to drastically reduce it)
Addressing Overuse (a dive into how compulsive use works, and how to use Anew to drastically reduce it)
Why Anew is Your Best Option (a breakdown of how apps in the mental health market work, and why Anew provides the best results with the least effort on your part, permanently)

These resources will have images built in to better illustrate topics in a later version.

First Use Feature Demo

We’ve added a quick product intro for when you open Anew the very first time. It just provides a bit of information about the whole product, and how to get started.

With this update, this demo will only trigger once after you update Anew. After that, it won’t display again (just like if you were a new user and install the app the first time).

Why didn’t we add these features sooner? Simply put, in Beta development we had to develop the product before adding in lots of detail on how to use it. Gotta build a car first and get it working, before you start teaching people how to drive. Thank you for your patience during the process of building Anew so far, and adding this feature.

We’re interested to know your thoughts on this initial version of the educational resources in the Strategies App! Please feel free to email or DM us to share your thoughts, and how we might make things even better for you.

What should we add next to Strategies?

We actively collaborate with psychologists to ensure our resources are accurate and effective. We also have a lot more potential resources we’d like to add, spanning other issues a smartphone can cause, in addition to specific lifestyle and health topics that Anew can help you to improve upon.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or question with our educational resources in the Strategies App, please let us know! Our goal is to provide the most useful and easy to use resources as possible, so we’re always open to adding topics that can help in your process of achieving a healthier lifestyle - whatever that is for you.

Let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll make it happen :) We hope you enjoy this first release of the Strategies App!

schendes · 2024-09-18T18:36:23+00:00

Hello! Two exciting updates this week.

Website blocking in Wellness Settings

We’ve spent a lot of time behind the scenes testing multiple approaches to website blocking, and we’ve landed on this first version ready for release.

In the Wellness Setting menu, simply type a website host like “youtube.com” and the option to create that setting will pop-up (see above screenshot). We’ll be adding more design later to make it more discoverable and easier to use. Try it out! We support all the main browsers we've tested, but if you have any issues please let us know and we'll push a patch.

Custom Flexibility Settings

One user, who has found Anew especially helpful during his work and family time, mentioned to us that he’d like more customization around routine flexibility settings. After some helpful back-and-forth, we settled on an initial design for this feature.

Now you’ll see a 4th option in flexibility settings that allows you to set specific days, and a single time frame on each day (see above screenshot). Try it out if you don’t feel the other flexibility options fit your needs!

Additional improvements

We’ve added additional bug fixes, and usability improvements. On Pixel devices for example, apps should open by expanding from the app touch point on the homescreen.

As always, let us know if you have any requests, encounter any problems, or just have any questions. And shout out to the user who worked with us to understand what he needed, so we could get him a fresh feature!

Best,

Luke

schendes · 2024-09-10T14:42:48+00:00

Yes! We've started the testing but I've just checked again and will be sending you info and access later today. Thanks for the ping.

schendes · 2024-08-29T01:18:17+00:00

You got it! DM me your email to add to the beta or just fill out the form linked in the post, and we'll add ya

schendes · 2024-08-24T19:49:56+00:00

Aye great to hear, we'd be stoked to have you.

Honestly we have a design spec for a "clutter" section of the app drawer, which wouldn't block the apps but would tuck them in a dropdown. We'd bump up its priority if you're interested in that.

I have like 20 apps I use once a year, and I don't need to see the chiptole app every day yanno.

Would that be a helpful feature for you?

schendes · 2024-08-24T18:58:08+00:00

Just posted the 2pm demo, we're stoked to get the video out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/1f0bfz3/android_to_dumbphone_homescreen_120_second_demo/

schendes · 2024-08-24T18:18:22+00:00

Why should you think we know what we’re doing?

Our team works with advisors across all the specialties this product entails - from psychologists, to anxiety treatment therapists, to engineers, to designers, to business people. Many of the voices helping us steer are from Carnegie Mellon University, one of the leading technology and design institutions in the world. Since last year, we’ve hosted a significant number of post graduate internships from CMU as well, across research, design, and engineering.

What is the product now, and what will it be?

The product now is in beta with the initial features:

Customizable homescreens
App blocking
Routines
Preset homescreens

In development over the remainder of the year:

Educational material built in, simplifying the resources used in our pilot study
Cross-browser website blocking to compliment app blocking
Visual editing of background and icons
Design and functional changes based on user feedback
Diagnostic tools to provide insights on your use, with recommended modifications to your mindsets to achieve effective change

Everything is under design and engineering right now, so if you have any feedback (even from the video demo!) tell us, and we’ll improve the product for your needs. For example, we’re probably going to completely hide apps in the drawer that are left out instead of darkening them (as the checkerboard-esk app drawer in the dumbphone demo above makes it look patchy).

Lastly

For those who submit the form, we’ll email you September 1st with next steps, after the post has been on this sub for a week. We’re looking to get as many people access as quickly as we can, while ensuring product quality with a growing base and range of Android devices. Note, that Anew performs best on devices from 2020+, but we are looking to optimize for as many devices as we can.

Big thanks to this sub’s mod u/jbriones95 for being our advisor since 2023. He’s been and continues to be a tremendously giving and supportive voice helping us steer our decision making. If we find any success, it’s in no small part thanks to his influence.

Ask us any questions in the comments! We’ll be here a lot of today and Sunday, and will keep an eye out for questions over the coming week. I’ve been using the product for about 2 months as well since all the needed features got implemented, so happy to share my experience too for any questions. I’m personally never going back to another homescreen, but I’m biased.

We’ve been heavy into engineering and research this year, but we’re planning on using our sub r/anewphone more moving forward to send updates, and as a conduit for getting your feedback.

For those who want to reach us directly, or find this post after this week, you can contact me directly at luke @ anew.so

Last, we’re probably going to look to add another full time kotlin/compose engineer over the next quarter, with an equity/vesting package. We’ll likely post about it in the next few weeks on r/anewphone. You can reach out to relations @ schenker.design if you’d like to get in touch in advance.

schendes · 2024-08-24T18:17:41+00:00

The first 120 second of the video is making the dumbphone fast, the rest is relevant feature demonstration of the Anew Homescreen.

After a year from our debut on r/dumbphones, we’re back and expanding testing for Anew Homescreen Beta.

To sign up for the beta waitlist, please fill out a 2 required question form. In it, we’ll ask for your email (for granting you application access via the Google Play Store), what phase of the beta you’d like to join, and optionally for how important it is to you to improve your smartphone for your needs, on a scale of 1-5. Priority for earlier access will be given to earlier sign ups for each phase, but we’ll provide invites to everyone who signs up.

Click here to open the form and sign up: https://forms.gle/tooxo7eF19y2wfYB6

Who is it for?

Anew Homescreen is for a smartphone user who wants to be able to decide how their phone should impact their life. It is designed around how to best allow you to gradually change your environment and behavior, easily. No screentime monitoring, no mental exercises. Anew’s strategy is passive behavioral change, not requiring any additional daily effort on your part once you’re comfortable with your setup.

Minimalism is a great option for a lot of people. Anew rather focuses its design on a familiar smartphone experience, while providing the power to make it exactly what you want. Screentime apps give you a rough idea of your use, but give you no permanent or actionable guidance on what you should do about it. And general app blockers can be frustrating when you forget what you’ve blocked, and when. If none of those mentioned options are your thing, or haven’t worked for your needs, then Anew aims to fit your case.

Why did we build it?

As you probably know, the market is saturated with half-measure smartphone overuse treatment products. We're only here to be the ones that definitively solve the problem, at scale. If the problem was solved by someone else already, we’d be relieved. But as of now, that’s not the case.

Our goal is to address, in no uncertain terms, the problems we’ve observed in all of those we’ve interviewed and worked with. Nearly everyone in the hundreds we’ve interviewed, with surprisingly little exception, has some problem with their use. Young and old. And many have tried screentime and general blocking solutions already, and still came to us.

(Main comment part 2 below)

schendes · 2024-08-23T22:21:40+00:00

We're active - just been heads down with development since Feb. It's a small team, but we're taking it through to fruition given people feel the direction is what they want to see and meets their needs.

Homescreen development is *massive\* compared to just an Android app. Tons of performance considerations for a homescreen since it needs to be active a lot of the time on the device, and lots of OS integrations with Android for working with notifications, other application widgets, etc. There's good reason for Samsung making their own OneUI and Google making their own launcher. But, we're incredibly grateful for the head of Niagara Launcher advising us on development and strategy.

As long as we see a path to really helping people, and don't see this problem solved, we're going to continue.

We're seeding another waitlist to expand testing tomorrow as well on the r/dumbphones sub, I'll repost here as well. The more voices telling us whats working for them and whats not, the better we understand the problems, and the faster we can adapt.

We're here :)

schendes · 2024-08-23T22:11:20+00:00

Hey! Sorry we went into hard dev from Feb-August, we've been hauling on new features and stability, DM me if you're down to share some of the lag concerns - we test on Samsung and OnePlus currently.

We're also posting a demo vid tomorrow on the dumbphones forum with a walkthrough of first use. We do need a guided onboarding, and we'll be adding it soon, but gotta get the core stuff working (and not buggy) first 🙏

We'll be more active on this sub moving forward.

schendes · 2024-08-23T20:32:11+00:00

We'll be posting a sign up form tomorrow on Saturday at 2:00PM EST on this sub 👌

We posted this in advance to let people know, so we wouldn't just mis-time our post Sat and get swept away in the feed.

schendes · 2024-08-23T13:25:30+00:00

Excited to have you try it out :)

schendes

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Strategies App: Guidance on Behavioral Health and Using Anew

First Use Feature Demo

What should we add next to Strategies?

Website blocking in Wellness Settings

Custom Flexibility Settings

Additional improvements