Terms of service
Draft — not yet reviewed. Written from the app's behaviour and accurate to it, but not reviewed by a lawyer, and containing placeholders in square brackets. Delete this box before publishing.
1. Agreeing to these terms
Installing or using Jolt means you accept these terms. If you do not, uninstall the app — which takes the same three taps it takes anyone else, by design.
2. What Jolt is
Jolt is a self-control tool for Android. It measures time spent in apps you choose, interrupts you while you are in them, and blocks them when a limit you set is reached.
Jolt is friction, not enforcement. It is deliberately possible to get past it: you can change a limit, start a relax session, disable the accessibility service, or uninstall the app. Nothing in the product prevents a determined person from doing any of those. It is designed to make a decision conscious, not impossible.
3. What Jolt is not
- Not a security or safety product. Do not rely on it to prevent access to anything that matters. It is not a content filter, a parental-control guarantee, or a substitute for supervision.
- Not a medical or therapeutic service. It does not diagnose or treat anything, including compulsive phone use. If phone use is harming you, please speak to a professional.
- Not always accurate. Time measurement depends on Android's own usage APIs and on your phone not killing background services. Figures can be wrong, and blocks can fail to appear.
Jolt never blocks the phone dialer, messaging apps, or emergency services. Neither you nor a supervisor can configure it to. Even so, do not rely on Jolt behaving correctly in an emergency — if the phone must work, remove the app.
4. Your account
Most of Jolt works with no account at all. If you create one, you do so with a phone number you control, and you are responsible for what happens under it. Tell us at [YOUR SUPPORT EMAIL] if you lose access to that number.
You must be at least [13 / 16 — the age of digital consent where you live] to hold an account.
5. Supervising someone else
Supervision lets one person set limits on another person's phone and see how that phone is used. This is a serious thing to do to another human being, so:
- You may only supervise someone who knowingly accepted your invite on their own device. The app shows them exactly what is shared before they accept.
- If they are a minor, you confirm you are their parent or legal guardian, or that you have their guardian's consent.
- You may not use supervision to monitor an adult who has not freely agreed — a partner, an employee, or anyone else. Doing so may be a criminal offence where you live, and it is a breach of these terms.
- A supervised person can end supervision at any time, from their own device, without your approval. You must not attempt to prevent, punish or circumvent that.
- What you learn about someone through supervision is theirs. Do not republish it.
We may end a supervision link, or an account, where we believe it is being used to monitor someone without their consent.
6. Acceptable use
Do not reverse-engineer, resell or redistribute the app; do not attack the service or other people's accounts; do not use it to break the law. Ordinary personal use, including on several of your own devices, is fine.
7. Availability
The local parts of Jolt work offline and keep working whether or not we do. The account features depend on services we pay for and could be interrupted, changed, or discontinued. If we ever shut down the account features, we will give notice in the app and the offline app will continue to work.
8. Price
[YOUR PRICING TERMS — free, one-off purchase, or subscription; if there is a subscription, state the billing period, renewal, and refund terms, and note that purchases are made through Google Play under Google's terms.]
9. Ending it
You can stop at any time by uninstalling the app, and can delete your account data by writing to [YOUR SUPPORT EMAIL]. We may suspend an account that breaches section 5 or 6, normally after telling you why.
10. No warranty
Jolt is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, we make no warranty that it will be uninterrupted, accurate, or fit for any particular purpose — including any purpose relating to someone's wellbeing or safety.
11. Liability
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for time or opportunity lost through a block that fired when it should not have, or for a block that failed to fire when it should have. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Your statutory consumer rights are unaffected.
[If you cap liability at a sum — for example the amount paid in the last 12 months — state it here.]
12. Changes to these terms
We will post changes here and, where they matter, tell you in the app before they take effect. Continuing to use Jolt after that means you accept them.
13. Law
These terms are governed by the law of [YOUR JURISDICTION], and disputes go to the courts of [YOUR JURISDICTION]. If you are a consumer, this does not remove protections you have where you live.
14. Contact
[YOUR SUPPORT EMAIL]