Free tools
Small, honest tools for looking at your phone habits and doing something about them. No account, no email, nothing sent anywhere — they run in your browser.
By Eli Schafer — Founder and developer, Hear Him
Last reviewed
Why start with a test rather than a blocker?
Because most people install a blocker, set it far too aggressively on day one, and have uninstalled it by Friday. The failure is almost never the tool. It is that the plan was sized for the person you want to be rather than the person you were on the worst day of last week.
A score tells you which problem you actually have. If your phone is a habit you reach for in gaps, a notification cull and moving the charger does most of the work and a hard block is overkill. If it is already setting the shape of your day and reaching into your sleep, no amount of deciding is going to hold, and you need something the operating system enforces rather than something you can dismiss. Those are different problems and they do not respond to the same fix.
The time calculator is there for a blunter reason. Nobody changes a number they have never looked at, and the yearly total is the version of the figure that tends to land — four hours a day is sixty-one whole twenty-four-hour days a year, which is more waking time than most people get with their own families.
What happens to the answers you give?
Nothing leaves your device. There is no form submission, no analytics event carrying your score and no database on the other end — the scoring runs in JavaScript in the page you are on. That is a deliberate design choice and it has one real cost: reload the page and your result is gone, because there is nowhere for it to have been saved. If you want to keep it, write the number down.
Common questions
Are these tools really free, with no sign-up?
Yes. There is no account, no email field and no paywall. Everything runs in your browser — the answers you give the phone addiction test are scored on your own device and never sent anywhere, which is also why your result disappears if you reload the page.
Do I have to install the app to use them?
No. The tools are web pages and work on any phone or computer, iPhone or not. HearHim is the iPhone app they come from, and the test suggests a daily reading goal you could use in it, but nothing here is gated behind downloading anything.
Is the phone addiction test a medical assessment?
"Phone addiction" is not a formal clinical diagnosis in the DSM-5 or ICD-11, and this is not a medical test. It is a structured way to look at your own habits across patterns researchers commonly describe — salience, loss of control, withdrawal, tolerance and conflict with the rest of life. If your phone use is seriously affecting your work, relationships or mental health, talk to a doctor or counsellor rather than a web page.
Where does the screen time number come from?
You enter it. The calculator does the arithmetic from there — hours per week, hours per year, and the equivalent in whole 24-hour days. For the real figure rather than your guess, look on your iPhone under Settings, then Screen Time, then See All Activity. Most people find the pickup count more startling than the hours.
What makes these different from the dozens of other screen time quizzes?
Two things. They do not try to sell you anything at the end, and they take the Christian angle seriously rather than bolting a verse onto generic productivity advice — the plan you get back assumes you want the reclaimed time to go somewhere specific, not just away from your phone.
Read first. Then scroll.
HearHim shields your distracting apps until you have spent five minutes in scripture. Free on iPhone and iPad.