The story of TLAU

How it all started

I (the developer) always wanted to have a screen time app that not ''just works'', but has something more. 
For a long time, I didn't know what that something is, but after some thinking, i found that many apps basically force the user to exit the phone, which often meets a reaction of trying to cheat the app, trying to be on the phone more and eventually uninstalling the app, because a daily limit isn't an addiction-stopper. I wanted to create something unique, where the user actually decides their usage. At these times, i wasn't a developer.

Early days

One day, i discovered an awesome Android app - Tasker. I must say, i really recommend it. It is an app for automation which is so strong that one can develop apps using it! So i started doing some mostly random things which i found cool and I was getting familiar with the way Tasker works. After some months, one very important thing happened - I remembered my vision from years ago, a screen time app that would actually work, and I began writing the code. It was a big struggle.

The tie to Tasker

Since i developed using Tasker, i didn't have to write the code directly and I basically used predefined actions. Think of it like Scratch but 100 times harder. This has a massive advantage for people like me who really don't want to check every line for a missing '';'' and even if they wanted, they couldn't. But as everything. this tie isn't one sided. For a long time, i could create apps only for an old version of Android, because Tasker simply didn't have the ability to create apps for newer versions. That has changed, but there are still some technical limitations that TLAU has.

These days

I develop TLAU still using Tasker and i am not planning to switch anywhere else. I live with technical limitations, because some people still use TLAU even with them and I wait for the developer of Tasker to remove the limitations that it has. I believe that helping people wasn't ever about being perfect and cheap of both time and money. I run TLAU at a personal financial loss, because I believe in good-doing and privacy.