Auszeit: A Graz Indie Developer Slows Down Instagram With a 15-Second Pause
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You just want to check Instagram for a minute, and suddenly it is midnight: Karl Maier, a developer from Graz, Austria, has built an app to break exactly that reflex. Called Auszeit, or Off Hours in English, it has been available for iPhone and Android since October and puts a short pause in front of selected apps. Only then do users decide whether they really want to keep scrolling. The basic version is free, and the full version costs €9.99 a year.
The idea came from his own experience. He often wanted to take just a quick look at Instagram, and then two hours were gone, Mr. Maier said. A business consultant by trade, he built Auszeit as a one-person project, without investors or a team, and released it through his company, nxtChange Consulting FlexCo, in Graz.
How Auszeit Works
The principle is simple. Users choose which apps should pause and when, such as social media in the evening, games during working hours or streaming on weekdays. Anyone who opens Instagram, TikTok or Netflix during that window first sees a countdown.
- Pause: In the free version, the countdown lasts 15 seconds. After that, users consciously decide whether to take a break or make an exception.
- Exceptions: An exception lasts a few minutes, five in the free version. Then the countdown starts again.
- Technology: On the iPhone, Auszeit uses Apple’s Screen Time interface; on Android, it uses the accessibility service.
The app is available in German and English in 37 European countries on the App Store and 36 on Google Play.
What Auszeit Costs
Mr. Maier relies on a freemium model with a subscription:
- Free: One break covering up to two apps, a 15-second pause and five-minute exceptions.
- Auszeit Plus: €9.99 a year or €3.99 a month. Those are Austrian prices; Apple and Google convert them for other countries.
- What Plus adds: More breaks, for example for weekends, up to 50 apps per break on the iPhone and an unlimited number on Android, pauses of 30 or 90 seconds or a full lock until the break ends, and exceptions of one, five or 15 minutes.
- Subscription: It renews automatically and applies only to the platform on which it was purchased.
No Data, No Account
On privacy, Mr. Maier makes a clear promise: Auszeit requires no account, no server and no analytics tools, and all data stays on the device. There are no ads. On the iPhone, the app stores selected apps only as encrypted iOS identifiers. On Android, it checks only which app is in the foreground, without reading screen content or keystrokes, according to the developer. Auszeit does not track how long anyone uses which app.
David Versus the Screen Time Giants
Auszeit is not alone in the market. Apple and Google offer their own tools for limiting app use, Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing. There are also apps like Opal and ScreenZen. The closest rival is one sec, a German app that also relies on a short pause before an app opens. A 2023 study published in the journal PNAS, with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development among its authors, showed that such speed bumps can work: With one sec, use of the targeted apps fell 57 percent.
Auszeit aims to stand out with fixed time windows that kick in automatically and by collecting no data at all.
Self-Help With Limits
The app is not a cure-all for smartphone addiction, and Mr. Maier says as much himself. Auszeit is meant as a self-help tool, according to its website. Breaks can be switched off at any time, and a stricter lock is available only in the paid version. Auszeit also blocks only apps, not websites, so anyone who opens Instagram in a browser gets through without a countdown. And on some Android devices, battery-saving features can stop the app from running in the background unless it is specifically exempted.
