Who makes PhoneStop
By Ruslan Shchuchkin, who built PhoneStop · · Read this page as Markdown
I am Ruslan Shchuchkin, an independent software engineer, and I build and write PhoneStop on my own. I am not a clinician or a licensed therapist, and I do not pretend to be one: I am an engineer who got tired of screen-time tools that did not work, so I built a different one and write honestly about the rest. You can check who I am on LinkedIn.
Why I built it
I tried blocking apps for a year. I blocked Instagram and moved to TikTok. I blocked TikTok and moved to the browser. The blocklist only ever held the apps I already suspected, so the hours quietly moved to whatever was not on it, and my total screen time did not fall. The one number that cannot be gamed is the total, so PhoneStop budgets the whole phone instead of policing one app at a time. That is not a marketing angle; it is the reason the app cannot block a single app, by design.
How I research the comparisons
Every comparison page on this site follows the same method, and I keep it honest:
- The facts are structural and dated. Platform, price model, what the app does when you hit the limit, whether it needs an account, what data it collects. Prices and features move, so each page carries the month it was last checked.
- The ratings are pulled, not guessed. The store rating, the number of ratings and the last-updated date come straight from each app's public listing, and I refresh them on a schedule.
- I test where I say I test. Where a page says I ran the app, I ran it, on a real device, and the screenshots are my own.
- I do not call anyone a liar. Where a competitor is genuinely better at something, the page says so. The goal is to be the most useful page on the query, not the loudest.
The app
PhoneStop is a free Android app. It collects nothing, holds no accounts, and does not even carry the internet permission. An iPhone version is coming. If any of that changes, this page changes with it.