Android is getting a gentle new way to combat your doomscrolling habit

Android already has tools to help you keep your app habits in check, but anyone who has ever opened Instagram for “two minutes” knows how quickly good intentions can evaporate. Google wants to acknowledge that most of us wish we doomscrolled a little less, and now has a feature designed to step in while you’re actively using an app that tends to swallow more of your time than planned.

Google announced the new Digital Wellbeing feature, called Pause Point, at I/O today. The tool lets you label certain apps as distracting and, when you open one of those apps, Android gives you a 10-second breather to ask why you’re there before you carry on. It’s a light bit of friction, but that’s the idea — it’s not necessarily there to stop you completely. Sometimes we just need a brief reminder that we’ve been staring at a phone screen for longer than we might have intended.

During that pause, Google says you’ll be able to do a short breathing exercise, look at favorite photos, set a timer, or jump to alternative app suggestions, such as an audiobook. Pause Point also includes a small guardrail to prevent anyone from undoing their good intentions right away, since disabling the feature requires restarting your phone. That could make it more flexible than Android’s existing options to lock yourself out of an app after a set amount of usage every day, while still giving you a nudge when a quick scroll turns into a lost chunk of the afternoon.

Google says more Digital Wellbeing features are coming later this year, though it hasn’t shared further details at this stage. Pause Point isn’t going to magically fix your relationship with your phone, but it might help you periodically remember that the IRL world exists.