SqwarkSelf vs one sec
one sec puts a deep breath between you and a distracting app. SqwarkSelf puts your own words on the window you drifted into. Of everything compared here, a close cousin.
one sec is a friction app. Before a distracting app or site opens, it shows a short exercise, by default a deep breath, and then lets you choose whether to go in. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Android and the Mac, with browser extensions too, and it can also block things outright or on a schedule.
Both delay rather than wall off, which makes it a close cousin of SqwarkSelf. The difference is what sets them off. one sec reacts to the app or site you open. SqwarkSelf reacts to a window you ruled out coming to the front during a watch, and hands back the sentence you typed; with your own Jev key, sites that can go either way, like YouTube, are checked against what you said you’d do.
Side by side
| SqwarkSelf | one sec | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Mac only, macOS 14 or later. | iPhone and iPad (iOS 15 or later), Android, Mac (macOS 14 or later, on the Mac App Store), and extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Arc. |
| When you drift | Only the off-task window goes dark, with your own words on it and a ten-second ring. Then the app is hidden, or the browser goes back to a tab you were working in. | Before a chosen app or site opens: a breathing exercise or another short intervention, then the choice to go on or back out. It can interrupt again after a set time. |
| Can you get past it? | Always. On a watch, “This is work” lets it through for the rest of the watch, and your call is logged; under a house rule, “Pause for 10 min”. There is no lock. | Yes, after the pause: that’s the design. Blocks can be set so the app can’t be opened at all during a block session; the iPhone has a strict mode. |
| What counts as a distraction | The kinds of thing you ruled out: social, chat, video, news, shopping. Built-in rules and your own entries settle the obvious cases (ad managers count as work). With your own Jev key, unknown sites and either-way ones like YouTube are checked against what you said you’d do. | The apps and sites you choose, or whole categories (social media, games, news). |
| Schedules and all-day rules | House rules: any of those five can be blocked all day, with a 10, 30 or 60-minute pause. No schedules. | Schedules for interventions and blocks, by weekday and time. |
| Tracking and history | Logs the app, window title and site. Shows today: where the time went, the top time sinks, focus kept. | Charts of your progress and the time you’ve saved. |
| Account | None. | Not required. An optional account moves a purchase between devices. |
| Where your data lives | In local files on your Mac. Nothing it records is sent to us. With your own Jev key, the cases the rules can’t settle go to TypeSafe. | “By default, your data remains offline”, and the intervention logic runs on the device. Its privacy policy lists an analytics service (TelemetryDeck). |
| Teams | None. | Team and school licences. |
| Price | US$49 once, for up to 3 Macs (not on sale yet). 14 days free; after that, logging and the Today view stay free. | A free version (one app). On the US App Store: $6.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $99.99 lifetime. A 1-week free trial. |
What one sec does better
- Your phone: iPhone, iPad and Android.
- Published research: a peer-reviewed field study of 280 users (PNAS, 2023) found that after six weeks one sec had cut how often they actually opened the apps they’d targeted by 57%: they tried to open them 37% less often than in week one, and backed out 36% of the times it stepped in. The study had no control group, and one of its authors created the app; the paper says both.
- Many kinds of pause, repeat interruptions, schedules and full blocks.
- Browser extensions that work on Windows and Linux too.
- A free version, a lifetime option, family plans, and team and school licences.
Where SqwarkSelf is different
- It steps in only during a watch, or for what you’ve made a house rule. The rest of the time it just keeps its log.
- It looks at whichever window is in front, all through the watch, not only when an app opens. (one sec can also step in again after a set time.)
- With your own Jev key, it can tell a YouTube tutorial from a YouTube hole.
- Budgets: chat can have, say, ten minutes an hour before it counts as drift.
Choose one sec if…
- your phone is where the time goes
- you want the pause itself: a breath, every time
- you want something free to start with
Choose SqwarkSelf if…
- your drift happens on the Mac, mid-work, in browser tabs as much as apps
- you want the pause to hand you your own plan, in your words
- you’d rather pay US$49 once than subscribe
What SqwarkSelf doesn’t do
- Mac only: no iPhone, no Android, no Windows.
- No hard lock. On a watch you can always say “this is work”; a house rule can always be paused.
- No schedules, and no reports beyond today.
- No team features.
- It’s new: a first version, from a very small company.
What we checked
Everything in one sec’s column comes from these pages, read on 21 September 2026. If something has changed since, their page is right and this one is out of date.
- one-sec.app: What one sec is
- one-sec.app/platforms: The Mac app; browser extensions
- one-sec.app/faq: Interventions, schedules, blocks, statistics, free version, trial, accounts
- one-sec.app/privacy: Data offline by default
- apps.apple.com/us/app/one-sec-screen-time-focus/id1532875441: Mac, iPad, iPhone; macOS 14.0 or later; US prices
- doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2213114120: Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen (2023), PNAS
one sec is a trademark of its owner. SqwarkSelf isn’t affiliated with it, and this page uses no logos or screenshots of theirs.
