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Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions
Hi HN!
Super proud to showcase Foqos! I wanted to create a way to physically block apps on my phone, always had a bunch of NFC tags, combined the 2 together over the holiday break and Foqos was born. You can create profiles, write them to NFC tags and track your weekly focus.
Its completely open source and will always be free! There is an affiliate link in the app for nfc tags and donations are completely optional
Link here: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/foqos/id6736793117 https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/foqos/id6736793117
- aucisson_masque 2y agoImpressive. I'm sure it will help tons of people dealing with lack of focus.
- pvg 2y agoI might be missing it on your page but can't seem to find the link to your source repo.
- awaseem 2y agoThat is totally my fault. Repo here: https://github.com/awaseem/foqos https://github.com/awaseem/foqos
- mikodin 2y agoThis is awesome, yay for an open source https://getbrick.app/ https://getbrick.app/ I'm curious if you have an NFC tag that you'd recommend or that you like to use?
- awaseem 2y agoYeah there is tags in the app you can buy that just links out to Amazon, just a disclaimer it is an affiliate link. Otherwise this is what I had around the house: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B075MD13Z7 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B075MD13Z7
- compootr 2y agoI was intrigued by brick, now this, and can't use either. is there seriously no android app like these? :(
- awaseem 2y agoYeah I think the reason is the family activity on iOS is so easy to build around. I'm really sorry I don't own an android phone or have time to port it :(
- high_priest 2y agoScreenZen works great. One would have to convince the dev to include NFC support.
- netsharc 2y agoTasker has NFC reading capabilities and is programmable to do stuff when it detects an NFC ID, I don't know if it can lock the phone though (there's an app called Lock My Phone, and Tasker has the ability to cause apps to take some actions, but I don't know if both can be combined). E.g. I have 2 NFC tags on my desk, when Tasker detects one of them, it calls a HTTP URL of a PHP script on my NAS, the script tells my Hue Bridge to switch on a Hue-enabled power socket (into which my monitor and speakers are plugged), and then the script sends a Wake-On-LAN packet to my desktop PC. The other one turns off that Hue-enabled power socket (I put my computer into sleep separately).
- GOATS- 2y agoIt would've been nice to see what the apps looks like when they're blocked.
- awaseem 2y agoYeah 100% gonna update the demos, thank you for the feedback!
- nozzlegear 2y agoNeat! Any idea if it'd be possible to make this work with macOS as well? I don't think Macs have NFC, but they do sync things like Do Not Disturb states between iOS and macOS.
- awaseem 2y agoI can look into it, I tried to find a way to trigger Focus modes on iOS a profile being active and it seems they only allow you to read the state and no write or update it
- filoleg 2y agoI might be misreading what you are asking, but I just went into Shortcuts app and tried creating a new one, and there are both “Get Current Focus” and “Set Focus” actions. Is this what you were looking for? “Set Focus” allows setting any focus mode (including custom ones, you can see one in my screenshot) on/off. And if you choose “on”, there is an additional conditional afterwards (until manually turned off/until time/until leaving location/until a calendar event ends). Here is a screenshot of how it looks (https://ibb.co/R6gdRq4 https://ibb.co/R6gdRq4).
- awaseem 2y agoYeah I can't find a clear way to do this from Swift and APIs apple exposes. I can be very wrong though and just didn't dig hard enough
- filoleg 2y agoAh, you were trying to do it through Swift/within an actual app, thanks for clarifying. I think you are right, I couldn’t find a way to directly set status from within Swift, but there is a somewhat janky workaround I thought of. You should be able to have Shortcut hooks within your app (i.e., once the shortcut is triggered, it triggers an action within your app; or, inversed, have your app trigger a shortcut), and then have an official companion Shortcut for your users they can install with a single click. There might be other valid approaches, but they all seem to involve Shortcuts in some way. However, it is definitely a suboptimal approach, compared to just doing it all within the app (which I couldnt find a way to do either).
- Unearned5161 2y agoNeat implementation! Big fan of integrating more NFC into apps. There's something satisfying and reassuring about the physicality of it all. I'll add a vote to whoever has the time to port it over to android =)
- amanda99 2y agoI'm finding that scanning NFC tags is pretty slow with iPhone. There's this automatic flow that's pretty cumbersome and slows me down. Then when it fails there's some annoying animation. This is with the Yubikey authenticator app. Are you finding anything similar? Is it not annoying to be scanning these all the time?
- awaseem 2y agoYeah I also find Ghost scans happen, it happens where I try to scan a tag and it says something has been scanned even though I'm no where close to the tag. I think its an issue with NFCReader in iOS
- fuddle 2y agoIt would be nice to see a demo of the app working in the real world with an nfc tag, not just an app recording.
- amelius 2y agoYeah, I have no idea how these tags are actually being used, let alone why they could be useful.
- hailruda 2y agoNFC tags can be scanned using a phone. An app on the phone can then detect the action and act accordingly. The phone can differentiate between different tags. I use an NFC tag to lock the house using Home Assistant.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amelius 2y agoOK. Why not just tap "lock the house" on your screen? Or use a voice interface (which requires zero extra hardware)?
- phist_mcgee 2y agoI like the hardware aspect, it feels very intentional and deliberate for context switching.
- awaseem 2y agoI have a recording on the site here: https://youtu.be/70C7L0T1VVY https://youtu.be/70C7L0T1VVY. That is my real phone with me scanning a tag, I'm just using screen studios new phone recording feature
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- layer8 2y agoBy the way, you can trigger iOS shortcuts with NFC tags, so in principle you can trigger any functionality exposed as a Shortcut action. However, NFC recognition doesn’t always work as smoothly as one would hope.
- _tariky 2y agoIt depends on the type and manufacturer of the NFC chip. I recommend using SLIX2 chips; they are a bit more expensive, but they work perfectly.
- awaseem 2y agoYeah 100% I think I commented this somewhere else as well. Your phone already has this natively built in, you don't need any of these apps at all. Over the break I wanted to build something that was gonna make this easier for myself. I built it and made it totally free and open source. I don't see a competitive advantage, but just a fun challenge for myself to build and get this type of app reviewed. Maybe I'll write a blog post about the apple review submission because that was a not fun lol
- whycome 2y agoTo expand here, when using NFC to trigger an iOS shortcut, there's nothing actually written to the NFC. Instead, shortcuts responds when that NFC is present. So you can actually write something like a URL to the chip and have it act simultaneously. You can even use an airtag because it sees it as an NFC as well.
- 1f60c 2y agoWhy isn't the app available in the Netherlands?
- phindmarsh 2y agoSeems to be unavailable in New Zealand too.
- parkersweb 2y agoWould be great if it was available in the UK too!
- tigereyeTO 2y agoI'm curious why the NFC tags are required at all? Can't you switch profiles on your phone without scanning an NFC tag already? Couldn't your app allow profile switching without requiring any NFC tags? It's not clear to me what the NFC tags add to this experience.
- kojeovo 2y agoI think its so that you can't easily toggle them off by using the phone software. for example, you are trying to get work done so you set two up: a focus one by your desk, another somewhere else where you have to get up. so you have to get up and walk over to the 2nd one to turn off the focus mode
- enoch_r 2y agoIt's a commitment device - e.g. leave your "mindless scrolling" NFC tag at home so you don't mindlessly scroll while you're out.
- wduquette 2y agoI was wondering that myself. At a guess, you put a tag at each focus location for the kind of focus you do at that location. At your desk, you put a tag that enables your working focus. At your bedside, you put a tag that enables your sleep focus. Sounds cool but unnecessary.
- dingnuts 2y agonecessary for those of us who forget what they're doing whenever they open their phone. The ability to tell my phone "shut up I'm at my desk" without opening it and being confronted with the home screen & notifications (and then forget what I was doing) is a super cool idea. I have ADHD though
- hecanjog 2y agoIt appealed to me since the way I block distractions is easy for me to unblock them, too. (like HN, I unblocked it to look for commentary on the bitbucket outage and now I'm reading random articles) If unblocking via software is easy too, this doesn't really work, but I could see giving the physical tag to a friend or leaving it somewhere in a different building causing enough friction for me to reconsider if I really want to go to the effort just to look at some news headlines.
- ajoseps 2y agoI use the brick app: https://getbrick.app/ https://getbrick.app/, and it works pretty well, but they have this weird bug where selecting certain apps on a block list crashes the app. They have a pop-up indicating that it's some apple-related bug, which I find kind of hard to believe. Is this something that also happens in your app?
- awaseem 2y agoI haven't noticed this on my personal use. It does seem like they use the family picker activity built into iOS. So maybe the issue is here as well.
- ajoseps 2y agoIt doesn't happen to every search. For me personally, if I try to search for apps starting with "r", it tends to crash. Not sure if it's related to the number of applications it needs to search for that match the prefix (for this case I was trying to block reddit).
- awaseem 2y agoMaybe its the list of app you have on your device? For me its fine but changes as the list is to long? Just a random guess though
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dsp_person 2y agoI noticed the trend of "Made with (Love emoji)", but has anyone tried Made with Hate or other emotions?
- jwineinger 2y agoI have occasionally wanted to trigger location-specific behavior on my kid's devices, like turning the wifi off when in their bedroom. This feels broadly in the category to me.
- dylan604 2y agoCouldn't you do this with your router/firewall? Of course, this would mean managing devices by MAC instead of DHCP, but one of the wifi routers (maybe a Tomato upgrade) allowed designating blocks of time to allow/deny WAN access
- Terr_ 2y agoDoesn't that mean you'd also need to somehow disable mobile data, and possibly calls as well if you don't want them phoning their friends late at night? Might be easier to insist that phones charge overnight in some parentally-observable central area... Though I suppose they might use them for alarm clocks.
- inerte 2y agoDevice could be a tablet without cellular. Anyway, my son has a phone (hand down from me 5 years ago) without cellular.
- vednig 2y agoThis is awesome, now I can switch between work and home with just a tap.
- awaseem 2y agoYeah exactly! I use this everyday for work and gym.
- realityloop 2y agoApp not available in my country (Australia)
- awaseem 2y agoYeah sorry about that, I messed up the listing and I'll work to get it out to more countries
- lucasacosta_ 2y agoI'll be waiting for it over here in Argentina too!
- whatsthatabout 2y agoCool idea, wanted to try it out but it's not available in my country. Any reason for this? :)
- insane_dreamer 2y agoVery cool; wondering if this could work as a parental control. "screen time" on iOS is fundamentally broken, and something like this would require the child to come to the parent for screen time extensions (if the parent has the NFC chip).
- puttycat 2y agoHow is that different from the parent holding the code?
- linkregister 2y agoApple Screen Time will occasionally stop blocking applications, allowing the child account to use them without restrictions. Other drawbacks include only a single period of "down time" per day. There is also an inability to totally block applications; the closest analogue is to set a maximum of one minute for the website or application.
- insane_dreamer 2y agonot just occasionally but often, in our experience with multiple phones and iPads. I have 2 kids with devices and have found Screen Time completely useless. It is the right idea in theory but in practice it's broken (I'm guessing no Apple higher ups have young kids that they've tried to use this with.) Also, besides the resets (and by reset I mean not just time restrictions but content restrictions too), my kid can just bypass it by entering his AppleID password.
- baxtr 2y agoThere are many YouTube videos for teens on how to bypass ScreenTime. It’s a mess that Apple needs to clean up quickly
- linkregister 2y agoFor this reason a configuration profile [1] is the only fool proof method. However, I have only used them to deploy permanent content restrictions. I don't know of a way to enable or disable restrictions based on the time of day or a certain duration. 1. https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-configurator-mac/create-and-edit-configuration-profiles-pmd85719196/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-configurator-mac/creat...
- arjvik 2y agoThis is really cool! I know developing apple apps is expensive, how can I donate?
- awaseem 2y agoThats so kind! No need to donate, just use the app and give me any feedback. I love developing things like this!
- chrisbrandow 2y agowould it be possible to trigger profiles with Bluetooth Beacons?
- awaseem 2y agoWoah never heard of these? Gonna check them out...
- brianmaurer 2y agoVery cool! I was about to pay $50 to do this with Brick. What's the best way to support the project?
- brianmaurer 2y agoSaw there's a "Support Us" option in the app for $2. Will do that!
- awaseem 2y agoThat is so kind! Feel free to share it around. Appreciate the support!
- brianmaurer 2y agoOfc. Not sure if this was inspired by the thread on non-distracting products, but you could try plugging over there too [0]. Hope you're enjoying the HackerNews high today [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780953
- atVelocet 2y agoSo this is just a wrapper for Automations and Profiles (or how Apple calls it: Focus). But i like the idea to make such features accessible to the everyone and not only people who geek out on their phone. As others pointed out you should implement qr codes which would make it even more usable.
- awaseem 2y agoYeah absolutely, I went with the profiles logic switch so I can add other forms of activations for blocking and unblocking, like QR codes, timers, etc...
- n0t3ths81 2y agoNot available in Spain. :(
- Dansvidania 2y agoIs it not available in the EU?
- cmauniada 2y agoCalgary?? Love to see it! Great product!
- awaseem 2y agoCOW TOWN
- s_k_ 2y agocool, but can't use it : ( since it's not available in every country
- awaseem 2y agoYup working on it. Totally my fault hope to get it fixed this weekend!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dperrin 2y agoCool idea! Any chance you’ll make it available in New Zealand? I’d love to try this out.
- smartis2812 2y agoLooking forward to use it. But its currently not available in my country. Previous comments show, DEV is already working on it. :)
- tzm 2y agoThis is a fantastic way to lock down an app for kids.
- uhlhosting 2y agoAdd more regions for the app, maybe european countries too?
- grjj 2y agoLove this but it doesn't seem to work as I had hoped. I have 140 apps blocked in the profile but it appears only 15 actually blocked on my phone. Is there an app limit to how many can be blocked?
- oblo_mov 2y agoI really love the app and the idea - I am using it on an iPhone 13 Pro. It does work to block everything but there seem to be issues when selecting or deselcting from large categories. E.G. I have 30 Health Apps and I want to enable SleepCycle while keeping the others blocked. That does not work it will always automatically unblock all 30. Therefore it does not let me create any profiles with actual use unless I block everything.