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Leash, a low-dopamine mobile browser replacement

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Hello!In an attempt to reduce my time spent on screens (and more time in real life), I uninstalled social media from my phone ages ago. The same for email: only on desktop for me.At some point, I discovered that I would, however, not spend that much less time on my phone, but rather 'migrate' to other habits, such as impulse checking of news sites.A mobile browser is like a fridge full of sweets if you're trying to stay on a healthy diet.So I've been living without a mobile browser for a long time: I disabled Safari on my iPhone in parental controls (as you can't delete Safari without installing another browser), and it worked quite well for me: I indeed spent way less time on my phone (RSS for news works better, because the RSS feed has a defined ending).But in some situations, this was a problem: Scanning a QR code to pay for a parking lot, tapping a link that a friend sent me over WhatsApp, or simply looking up something on the web (I even installed the Wikipedia app) – not possible.So I decided to (vibe) code a simple browser myself, but:- without an address bar - without 'favourites'... so a browser that merely reacts to your life: QR code scanning works again (just scan via the camera app, will open Leash), so does tapping links and looking up stuff on the web.I've been daily driving it for about 6 weeks now, and it works like a charm.Of course, I'm also interested in any other 'low-dopamine' mods you're doing!

HN · launched Jun 10, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 87%) · 0 views

Niche: specialized and developer web browsers · 84 launches, 10 in the last 7 days ▲ +11% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Communication
  • B2C
  • Not AI
  • Commercial product

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

Yes A distraction-free minimalist mobile browser can be built using standard iOS (WKWebView) or Android (WebView) wrappers with reader-mode styling and domain blocklists.

Discussion

6 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Safari, Spotlight (for accessing blocked sites)

Concerns raised: Users can easily bypass via Spotlight or link shortcuts, Frequent cookie/login clearing is cumbersome friction, Unclear if it blocks all fatigue-related bloat or just restricts access

Feature requests: Full ad/auto-play video/moving parts blocking capabilities, System browser entitlement on Android (easier than iOS)

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 108 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #99 of 109 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 223 days after the earliest competitor.

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.