PlugBrain: The open-source app helping you take back control of your screen time

Mohammed Said Belaid — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 20:39:45 +0000

A quick scroll on social media. A peek into your favorite app. Before you know it, hours have disappeared. We've all been there!
People often refer to this as "Brain Rot": the feeling of mindlessly scrolling, swiping, and tapping long after you planned to stop!

That’s how the name PlugBrain was born, an app created to help you reconnect your brain and use your phone with intention. What began as a teaching experiment has since grown into a fully open-source project.

How PlugBrain works

PlugBrain is an Android app that helps you reduce screen time and use your phone more mindfully. Instead of simply blocking apps, it adds a twist: after you spend some time on distracting apps, PlugBrain makes you solve a quick math puzzle before continuing.

This small friction point makes you pause, think, and ask yourself: “Do I really want to open this app right now?”

Adaptive difficulty

One of PlugBrain’s most powerful features is its adaptive difficulty system.

The idea is simple: the more you give in to distractions, the more difficult the challenges get. And if you manage to stay away from distracting apps, the puzzles gradually get easier again.

This creates a balance between support and accountability:

More use = harder puzzles → A gentle push to rethink your habits.
Less use = easier puzzles → Positive feedback when you’re doing well.

Privacy First: No tracking, No Ads, No Internet

Most apps that promise to help you focus come with a hidden cost: they track your usage, collect data in the background, or interrupt you with ads. PlugBrain takes a different path!

No data collection: Your app usage stays on your device.
No ads: Nothing to distract you or push you toward upgrades.
No internet connection: PlugBrain works 100% offline, so your information never leaves your phone.

PlugBrain is fully FOSS

PlugBrain is a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project.

PlugBrain began as a personal tool I built to manage screen time for myself and my loved ones. Later, I shared the source code with a group of students as a teaching project, showing them how real-world app development works: from development, writing tests, to setting up CI/CD automation, to collaborating on an open source project.

What started as a personal experiment and a learning exercise eventually grew into something bigger, and today PlugBrain is fully open source.

Source code

How to contribute?

There are many ways you can help:

Feedback: Since no analytics are collected, your feedback is the best way for us to improve PlugBrain.
Translation: Help make PlugBrain available to more people around the world:
Creating issues: Report a bug, request a feature or improvement
Creating a new Challenge type: PlugBrain supports creating new challenges using a builtin Gradle generator.

Forem: Mohammed Said Belaid

From personal project to teaching project to open-source Android app