Leash, a low-dopamine mobile browser replacement

Details

External ID

48472475

Source

HN

Company

—

Product

Leash, a low-dopamine mobile browser replacement

Website domain

leash.ax

Launched

June 10, 2026

Cohort

—

Upvotes

5

Upvotes percentile

0.12568306010928962

Tags

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Fetched at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Updated at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

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!

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