Support
Answers to the most common questions about Decide. If yours is not here, write to us — the address is at the end of this page.
Step-by-step guides
The Help Center has illustrated answers for setting up Decide, protecting time, scheduling, Mini Break, plans and troubleshooting.
Allowing Screen Time permission
Decide uses Apple’s Screen Time to set apps aside, and iPhone asks for permission the first time you choose what can wait. The permission covers your own iPhone only: Decide is not a parental-control app, and nothing you choose is shared with anyone.
If you declined, you can still set everything up, and allow permission later in iPhone Settings under Screen Time. In Decide, Settings → Screen Time permission shows where things stand.
Starting protection
On Home, tap an area and choose what can wait: the specific apps, in Apple’s own picker. Decide can see how many you chose, never which ones.
Then, in the same area, under Protect now, choose how long — 30 minutes, 1 hour, until a time you pick (at least 15 minutes ahead), or no end time — and tap Begin. Home then shows that protection is on. While protection is on, opening one of those apps shows a screen reminding you what you chose, with Go back and Change in Decide.
The first time you start protection, Decide shows its plans. See “Plans and purchases” below.
Scheduling: when it matters
To protect the same time regularly, open an area from Home and tap Add time under When it matters. A time can repeat on the days you pick or happen once, on a date. It can run overnight, and each time has its own switch.
Add time opens on Repeats; Once is a choice inside it. Decide protects scheduled times even when the app is closed.
If iPhone will not accept a time — it is too short, or there are too many at once — Decide says so on the area and tries again the next time you open it.
Reminders
Each scheduled time can remind you 5 or 15 minutes before it begins: choose it under Remind me. iPhone asks for notification permission the first time you turn a reminder on.
Reminders are ordinary notifications. They show the area name, follow your notification settings and Focus, and may arrive quietly or late. A reminder does not start or stop protection; the schedule does that by itself.
Mini Break
When you need one protected app for a moment, a Mini Break lets you use it for 5, 10 or 15 minutes while everything else stays protected. When the time is up, Decide takes care of protecting the app again by itself, and Home shows whether that is confirmed.
Start one from Home with Take a Mini Break and choose one of the protected apps, or from the screen shown in place of an app: tap Change in Decide, then Take a Mini Break, and that app is already chosen. Pick 5, 10 or 15 minutes. End Mini Break stops it early.
A Mini Break needs protection to be on and Decide to be unlocked. If Decide has not yet confirmed that the app is protected again, Home says so; ending that protection clears it.
Ending protection
On Home, tap End protection, then End this protection. From the screen shown in place of an app, tap Change in Decide, then End this protection. If Change in Decide does not open Decide by itself, open Decide: it asks whether to change this protection.
Ending a scheduled time ends that period only; the next one starts as usual.
Settings → Stop all protection removes every restriction Decide applied and keeps your areas, apps and times. Settings → Reset Decide deletes everything Decide stored on this iPhone.
If Decide says it couldn’t stop protection just now, nothing was changed: try again.
Plans and purchases
Decide is free to set up, and everything you configure stays available whether or not you have a plan. Starting protection needs one: Monthly, Yearly or Lifetime. Yearly can begin with a seven-day free trial when Apple says you are eligible. Prices are shown in Decide before you buy.
Monthly and Yearly are subscriptions that renew automatically until you cancel. Lifetime is a one-time purchase, with no subscription. There is no Decide account: purchases belong to your Apple Account.
Settings → Plan shows your current plan, and Unlock Decide when you have none.
Restoring purchases
On a new iPhone, or after reinstalling or resetting Decide, tap Restore Purchases in Settings → Plan or on the purchase screen, signed in with the Apple Account you used to buy. Decide unlocks as soon as Apple confirms the purchase.
If Decide says no earlier purchase was found, check which Apple Account is signed in on this iPhone.
Managing or cancelling a subscription
Subscriptions are managed by Apple: in iPhone Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. Cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends to avoid the next renewal.
Purchases and refund requests are administered by Apple, through Report a Problem. You can also contact us about Decide or rights you may have under applicable consumer law.
When a subscription ends
Decide stops protecting until it is unlocked again. Your areas, apps and times are all kept, and you can still change them; scheduled times start again once Decide is unlocked.
Decide learns that a plan has ended when you open it. Until then, times that were already scheduled may still start.
Privacy
Decide has no account, no ads, no tracking and no analytics, and collects nothing. Your setup is stored on your iPhone, and Decide never reads the names of the apps you choose. Optional reminders are delivered by iOS, and purchases are handled by Apple.
If protection does not seem to apply
In Decide’s Settings (the gear on Home), check that Screen Time permission says Allowed and that Plan shows a plan. In the area, check that something is chosen under what can wait, and on Home, that protection is on.
If Decide says it could not confirm or apply part of the protection, open Decide again: it checks and reapplies what you chose each time it opens. If the problem stays, end the protection, start it again, and write to us.
Contact
Write to us by email. In Decide, Settings → Support → Contact Us opens a message to the same address. It helps to say what happened, what you expected, and your iOS version. Support is by email only; there is no ticket or account to create.