Our story
Why I built AM Buffer
I was losing 15 to 45 minutes every morning to my phone. This is how I noticed, what finally helped, and why it turned into an app.
Every morning went the same way
I would wake up and grab my phone before I was properly awake: Slack, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter. Then I would sit on the toilet scrolling for 15 to 45 minutes. By the end I felt groggy, my legs were tired, my eyes were burning, and I felt terrible before the day had even started.
I tried to stop for two or three days and couldn’t. There was always some reason to pick up the phone, and then the whole thing started over.
The morning I left my phone at home
Then one morning I left my phone at home and went out for a walk and to buy some vegetables. It was the best I had felt in a long time.
That is when I realised the phone had to stay out of my mornings. I couldn’t find a blocker that kicks in the moment you wake up, so I built one.
What I built
AM Buffer is an alarm that blocks apps. You set your alarms in the app and pick which apps to block. When the alarm goes off, those apps stay locked for as long as you choose, 30 minutes by default. Everything else on the phone keeps working.
One feature came from testing it on myself. I woke up a little early one morning to check the alarm worked, and before it even rang I had drifted back into scrolling. A lot of people wake a little before their alarm, so Premium now starts blocking an hour before your first alarm too.
Building it
Apple has to approve any app that blocks other apps, through a permission called Family Controls, and you cannot even give the app to testers until that approval comes through.
Apple also rejected my first TestFlight build because it needed sign-in and I hadn’t given them a demo account. I removed sign-in for now, so AM Buffer works without an account and everything stays on your phone.
Mornings now
These days my mornings feel calmer. I spend that time with my wife, doing things around the house or just relaxing, and I get to real work faster.