Show HN: A bored button with a timer that only runs while your phone lies still

When you are bored your hand goes to the phone by itself, and half an hour later you are just as bored. Try the other way: tap the button and do whatever comes up. One idea, something real, now.

Make a proper cup of tea or coffee and drink it at the window. Nothing else.

Most bored buttons send you to a random website, so you end up scrolling again. This one gives you something to do away from the screen: press it, read the idea, put the phone down. Not for you? Press again.

Scrolling covers boredom for a while but does not end it: it is stimulation without effort, and when you close the app the boredom comes back, often with a bit of fatigue. What tends to work is doing something with your hands or your body, however small: cooking, walking, tidying, drawing, calling someone.

Boredom is not bad. It is the signal that you want something else. The idea is to answer it with something real instead of another screen.

If you got something you like, tap “Do it phone-free”. atitb opens Off mode: put your phone face down and it counts the time nobody touches it. No account, nothing to install.

A button you press when you are bored to get something random to do. Most of them open a random website; this one gives you a real thing to do without your phone, sized to 10, 30 or 60 minutes.

Something with your hands: cook a new recipe, clear one drawer, a jigsaw, sketch what is in front of you, read 30 pages, stretch on the floor or call someone just to chat.

Almost every idea on this page is free: a walk without earbuds, the park, the library, a sunset, a home workout, a handwritten letter or cooking with what is in the fridge.

Walk somewhere you never go, sit in a café with a notebook, browse a bookshop, the gym with your phone in the locker, a short novel in one sitting, or cook a dish from another country.

Scrolling gives stimulation with no effort and no end. After it, everything else feels slow. A few days of doing things off screen is usually enough for them to feel good again.