Last updated: October 15, 2026
DoneScrolling exists to help you stop doomscrolling. Being straight with you about data is part of the same promise, so this page is written in plain language.
For exactly one purpose: to tell you when DoneScrolling is ready for your phone, and to send occasional updates about the app. We never sell or share your email with anyone.
Signups are stored in a private file on our own server. No third-party form or marketing service ever sees them.
Email hello@donescrolling.com from the address you signed up with and say "delete me". We remove your entry, no questions asked. This is about the website list only; deleting your app account is separate and is described below.
DoneScrolling's whole job involves your screen-time data, so this part matters most:
Two ways, and they do the same thing:
It deletes your account and every commitment stored with it. Your screen-time data is not in that list because it was never sent to us in the first place.
The one thing we keep: a scrambled, one-way copy of your email address. DoneScrolling is free today. We keep this so that, if we ever offer a free trial of a paid plan, deleting your account and signing up again cannot restart it, and we use it for nothing else. It cannot be turned back into your address, and nothing else is stored beside it: no name, no commitments, nothing about how you used the app.
Be aware of what deletion means, because it is the honest trade the app is built around: it releases the apps and websites you committed to, and DoneScrolling stops blocking them. That is deliberate. A commitment you could cancel with a tap would not be worth making, so the way out is real, and it takes a deliberate step.
On iPhone, blocking runs on Apple's own Screen Time system. It is built so that even we cannot see which apps you picked or how long you spent in each one. The app only ever receives anonymous handles for them, plus a signal each time your combined time in them passes another minute, which is how it knows when your budget is spent. The per-app breakdown you see in the iPhone app is drawn inside a sealed Screen Time area that Apple provides: it can show those numbers on your screen, but Apple does not let it send them anywhere, not even to the rest of the app.
Blocking websites from the Popular sites list (Instagram, YouTube and other big sites) takes one more step. iPhone gives each site an anonymous handle, and those handles only show up inside that sealed area. So for the popular sites you have visited, the sealed area keeps their anonymous handles where the rest of the app can use them to block those sites when you ask. It never passes on a site's name or how long you spent there, and like everything else it stays on your phone.
On Android there is no equivalent, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. To block an app at the moment you open it, the app has to know which app is in front. So on Android it does see the names of the apps you chose to limit and how long you spend in them. That information stays on your phone like everything else.
Android does this through an accessibility service, which is a powerful permission, so here is exactly what ours is allowed to do. The service that blocks apps is configured so that it cannot read anything on your screen: not text, not messages, not passwords, not anything you type. It receives one thing, the name of the app that just came to the front. That is a setting in the app itself, not a promise, so it holds whether or not you take our word for it.
If you also turn on website blocking, which is off unless you choose it, a second service reads the address bar of Chrome to see which website is open, and checks whether Chrome's tab overview or New Tab page is showing. If the site belongs to an app you budget (x.com for X, for example) or is a website you added, the time counts toward your budget and the site is blocked when your budget or a lock window says so. On your phone it keeps the websites you add, minutes per app, and minutes on a short list of well-known scroll sites (YouTube, Reddit, X, Instagram and similar) so it can suggest what to block. It never keeps any other site, the pages you visit or your browsing history, and none of it is sent anywhere, except websites you choose to commit to, which are stored with your account like committed apps. It does not read pages, messages, passwords or anything you type. Our code checks which app is in front and stops unless it is Chrome.
When a site is blocked and the tab cannot go back, the app opens a short page on donescrolling.com that says so. The site's name travels in a part of the address your browser never sends to us, so our server only sees that the page was opened, like any visit to this site.
If any of this ever changes, we will say so here and in the app before it takes effect.