Stake against → shopping apps
Amazon, SHEIN, Temu, Etsy, ASOS, Zara — every app engineered to convert browsing into checkout. Lockin lets you stake against your daily shopping-app time. Stay under, your stake comes back. Cross it, your money goes to a charity you picked.
Suggested starting contract
$10/day against a daily limit of 15 minutes on the apps you choose.
Free on Google Play and the App Store. On Android, grant the screen time permission so Lockin can read minutes per app. On iPhone, grant Screen Time access so Lockin can read your daily app usage.
Choose the daily-limit contract. You set the apps, the minutes, the dollars, and the duration. Lockin enforces it.
Typical: Amazon, SHEIN, Temu, Etsy, Zara, ASOS, Instagram Shopping. Pick the ones you actually impulse-buy from.
15 minutes is enough for a deliberate purchase. The compulsion is the 47 unconscious browses, not the planned buy.
Recommended 5 to 15 USD per day for shopping apps — impulse purchases compound fast, so the counter-pressure needs weight. Charged to your card up front and held in escrow until the contract resolves.
Pick from Lockin's vetted list. If you fail, your stake funds the charity you chose. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations.
Review the contract — apps, limit, stake, charity, end date — and confirm. The contract is binding from that moment. No edits, no pause, no soft exit.
From Lockin's data
Verified on-device on both Android (Digital Wellbeing) and iPhone (Screen Time). Lockin reads the combined daily total for your selected shopping apps and compares it to your declared limit. Over by one minute, the contract resolves as forfeit and the stake routes to your chosen charity. Under, the stake returns to your card.
"I had 38 items sitting in SHEIN and Temu carts at any given time — that was the loop. Open app, browse for an hour, fill cart, get the abandonment email at midnight, cave. Two weeks of a 15-minute Lockin contract at 10 dollars a day and the carts are empty. I didn't buy a single thing I wanted last month and I don't miss any of it."
— Anonymous beta user, shopping apps challenge, 6 weeks active
Lockin tracks. On Android it uses Digital Wellbeing; on iPhone, Screen Time. Either way, one minute over your daily limit resolves the contract as forfeit at end of day. Your stake routes to charity. The accountability is financial, not technical.
Set a tight limit — 10 to 15 minutes a day. That is enough time for a deliberate purchase: open the app, search the item, check out. The compulsion this contract addresses is the 47 unconscious browses, not the planned buy. If you genuinely need more time for a major purchase, raise the limit at signup rather than mid-contract — the rules cannot be loosened once a contract is locked in.
Forfeited stakes go to a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list. You choose the charity from categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy when you set up the contract. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations. Refer to the transparency page inside the app for charity-by-charity tallies.
The Amazon app handles all of these — limit applies to total Amazon-app time. If you only watch Prime Video on the dedicated Prime Video app, that is tracked separately. For Kindle reading, the dedicated Kindle app is also separate. Lockin only restricts what you select; choose carefully and lean on the dedicated single-purpose apps when you can.
Free to download. You set the limit, the stake, and the charity.