Meaning is the world’s first AI screen time coach. Chat to unlock apps when you need them, but keep your usage intentional and short. Block apps, schedule sessions, and customize your coach. Loved by founders, students, and anyone with a phone!
👋 Hey Product Hunters!
We are thrilled to be launching Meaning, our first product hunt and free iOS app today!
Jake North and I are Stanford dorm mates studying design and computer science. We are both 20 years old living our entire lives in the world of social media:
What has become apparent to practically everyone is that the older generation is right: It really is those “Dang screens”. Screen time and social media apps are stealing our lives. If you were to spend 6 hours on your screen daily (less than the average American), you are spending 25% of your entire life on your screen (simple but scary math).
However, using a flip phone isn’t getting anyone anywhere today. We have a strong belief that phones and apps are powerful tools that can amplify our lives. To be most productive you need access to your phone during the day.
We realized by leaning into modern technology (AI) and developing a creative user experience this was a problem we could solve.
💥Boom. Meaning was born. Today (after 6 months) Meaning is ready for you and the world!
Meaning is an AI screen time coach that blocks distracting apps.
🛠️ How it works:
🛡️Setup and customize a blocking session to restrict specific apps for specific hours of the day.
👆To access a restricted app simply click the app normally, see our blocking screen, and press “Chat to Unlock”. Similarly you can chat with your AI through the “Chat to Unlock button in the Meaning app.
💬 Chat (text) with Meaning for ~1min to ensure your usage is intentional. Agree upon a time length to unlock said app. Once you are satisfied, Meaning will unlock the app you requested for only that amount of time.
🤳 Use your requested app. End the session early or Meaning will automatically relook the app once you’ve used your time.
We find this to be the perfect amount of friction to make you only use apps when you need them, and for a brief period of time. No more doom scrolling. The 1 minute unlock chats with Meaning are worth the hours of scrolling saved.
If you already love your flip phone or are a will power master, we are proud of you, and our product isn’t for you. For the rest of us Meaning is live on the iOS AppStore today! We are exploring a future android product offering.
We would love any ideas and feedback! Suggest a cool feature and we might build it.
The app is free for anyone to start using.
To thank you for being an early user if you press this link with the app downloaded you can get 40% off Meaning Pro for 4 Months:
https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?c...
The pro version gives you access to custom prompting, strict mode features, and early beta features. Give your AI personality, emphasize specific rules, or customize the difficulty of your coach.
Thank you so much! We will respond to all of you 💙.
Scroll with meaning,
Cannon & Jake
congratulations on the launch of Meaning, Cannon & Jake! it's exciting to see a tool that encourages intentional screen time usage. as someone who values productivity, i'm curious to know how Meaning determines the appropriate time length for unlocking apps during the chat sessions. wishing you all the best with the future android product offering!
Such a novel idea!
This is an amazing...
The app looks absolutely beautiful, super excited to incorporate into my day-to-day and haggle screentime with my digital overlords!
Exactly what I needed. The 'coach' aspect of it and not just another simple locker is really well done. Phones already have a locking feature inbuilt but it's so easy to just ignore them. Great stuff! 🙌
I've been trying out Meaning, and it's improved how I interact with my apps. The setup was a breeze and the chat feature makes me mindful of my app usage. Great work on the launch, guys!
Such a novel idea!
The app looks absolutely beautiful, super excited to incorporate into my day-to-day and haggle screentime with my digital overlords!
Great to see another app tackling digital wellbeing launching today! What I've launched today is aimed at promoting eye health during prolonged hours of screen work, but I gotta admit, 'Meaning' is on a whole other level! Awesome product!
This is like having a personal assistant for your phone! Finally, someone to keep me in line and stop me from mindlessly scrolling through memes all day 🤣
This absolutely aligns with the mission of Neurture and I'm really excited to see how this works. Great idea and good luck on the launch!
Congratulations on the launch, Meaning team! This sounds like an incredibly valuable tool for managing screen time and maintaining focus. I'm particularly intrigued by the chat-to-unlock feature - how does AI assess the necessity of app usage in real-time? All the best with this exciting new product!
Wow.
What a genuinely inventive product.
I was so disappointed to see that it's only for iOS.
I pay for Rize on my mac and I would definitely appreciate such a tool for my phone.
Great work guys, huge upvote!
Interesting idea, however I feel like having to chat with AI can be time wasting as well. What do you reckon? I mean you can always get annoyed by the AI and drop time usage anyway ahah
Great idea, really like it. Unfortunately the app doesn’t seem to recognise the pro subscription.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling to see if I could use restore subscription but there doesn’t seem to be an option.
Hey, at first i was like: "Another basic thing, with AI pressed into the name", but once you think about it more you realize what an amazing Idea it is!
I think the system is really great, since it has way more psychologic effects to chat why you open that app, then other apps who let you just wait etc...
Big applause!
Will the basic app always be for free?
Wish you the best!
Wait this is so useful- great application of AI for productivity! Can see a lot of high school and university students using this.
I have been using this app for only fifteen minutes and I definitively feel that I will be using Instagram and X less! Arguing with the AI makes me reflect about whether I should use an app and just makes it more logistically difficult to
