Set your own rhythm.

The sleep-first screen time app that protects the start and end of your day: Wind Down, Sleep, and Waking. So you wake up to a life you actually showed up for.

10:37 PM · Tonight's screen
Wind Down
Winding down
42 min until bed
Tonight's ritual
Journal
8 min
Begin
Journal
4-7-8
Sleep story
↓ Scroll into morning
11:47 PM

You promised yourself one episode. Then one more reel. Then 90 minutes are gone, your alarm is in five hours, and your phone is the only thing you've been honest with all night.

You've tried Screen Time. You've tried airplane mode. You've tried willpower. None of it worked, because none of it gave you something to do instead.

Substitution over restriction

Don't resist the urge. Redirect it.

The science of breaking phone habits is counterintuitive: restriction backfires. When researchers took a friction prompt apart to see which piece did the work, the winner wasn't the pause or the warning. It was the off-ramp: somewhere for the urge to go instead.

Block-only apps wall you off and wait for your willpower to hold. It doesn't. Tempo builds the half of the equation everyone else ignores, the replacement, and that's the whole product.

It was never a willpower problem. It was a missing replacement.

The Bookends System

Most apps want your whole day.
Tempo just needs the edges.

The bookends of your day decide everything else. Protect them, and the middle takes care of itself.

Wind Down
Winding down
42 min until bed
Tonight's ritual
Journal
8 min
Begin
Journal
4-7-8
Sleep story
9pm
3am
9am
Morning
Good morning
Thursday, July 2
Last night
7h 32m
Bed 11:04 PM · Wake 6:46 AM
Morning walk
Set intention
How it works

Three modes. One night.

These are the app's real screens. Pick a mode — or just watch the night go by.

Wind Down
Winding down
42 min until bed
Tonight's ritual
Journal
8 min
Begin
Journal
4-7-8
Sleep story
Wind down
Wind down
Try one below — or pause if you need to.
Take a breath
4 min · settle the body
Journal one line
60 sec
Name what you want
Sleep story
25+ min
Attention parked as you head to bed
A breath first.
Pause
End wind-down for tonight
11:47 PM · You open Instagram anyway

This is what answers instead.

No red walls, no shame screen. Tempo intercepts the pickup and offers the exits that actually work at midnight: a four-minute breath, one journaled line, a sleep story.

And you're never trapped. Pause the block when life needs your phone, or end the night's wind-down entirely. You own the decision — Tempo just makes sure it is one.

See how blocking works →
Ritual replacement

What a wind down feels like.

This is the guided 4-7-8 from the app, running for real: the constellation gathers as you breathe in, holds while you hold, and scatters over the long exhale that switches your nervous system off.

Stack it with an eight-minute journal or a sleep story. Twenty minutes that replace ninety minutes of scrolling — same dopamine drop, different ending.

See all rituals →
Round 1 of 4

Inhale through your nose.

Breathe in4
4-7-8 breathing · audio-led
What the research shows

The science is uncomfortably clear.

These are findings from peer-reviewed studies on the behaviors Tempo is built around, not results we're promising you.

0%
Fewer bedtime phone opens in a controlled trial, and up to 57% among long-term users.
Olbrich et al., PNAS 2023
0 min
Faster to fall asleep, from protecting 30 phone-free minutes before bed.
He et al., RCT
0 hrs
More sleep a year, from reclaiming 50 minutes a week.
JAMA 2025, n=122,058
The reclaiming presence movement

This is the "cigarettes on airplanes" moment for phones.

Your phone was stolen by design: dark patterns, dopamine loops, engagement metrics built to extract your attention for profit. A generation is chronically online while their actual lives atrophy. We exist so millions of people don't reach the end of theirs having never truly been there for it.

Community

You're not fighting alone.

Remote workers, parents, founders, night-shift nurses. People on every continent reclaiming their evenings together.

Read the stories →

First app I've used twice and not deleted out of guilt. The brain dump alone is worth it.

Marcus, software eng · Lisbon

I haven't opened Instagram in bed in 47 days. No streak shaming, just a habit that finally stuck.

Priya, designer · Mumbai
Tonight

Set your rhythm.

Free to download. Works tonight. No streaks, no shame, no productivity-bro nonsense.