About UnScreen

UnScreen tracks the time you spend on distracting sites and apps, then adds features to your browser that make addictive sites easier to ignore. Over time, it learns what works best to reduce distracted time for you.

Take out sleep, and the average adult will spend the majority of their life looking at screens. For many, that time feels more like a compulsion than a choice.

Excessive screen time has been linked to:

• Anxiety and depression
• Sleep issues
• Reduced attention span
• Diminished social skills

And that's before considering the broader societal impacts.

We created UnScreen to offer an evidence-based approach to reclaiming your attention and minimizing distracted screen time.

UnScreen began as a hobby project in 2022. We studied volunteer screen time patterns and built simple prediction engines to understand what drives social media overuse.

Later, we tested tools designed to reduce distraction, measuring what worked best for different user types. Excited by the data, in 2026 we began releasing tools to the public aimed at reducing distracted time.

John Bayne has worked exclusively on nonprofit technology for social impact since 2012. Specifically:

• John led tech at charity: water, a nonprofit that's built access to clean water for over 20M people across Africa and Asia.
• He led tech for sama.com (formerly samasource.org). Sama employs underprivileged youth, women, and refugees across Africa and Asia to train AI algorithms for companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta. Sama has elevated over 70,000 people out of poverty through dignified, computer-based office jobs usually only available to more privileged populations.
• At Kiva, he developed biometric tech to expand microfinance to communities previously considered too poor or remote to serve.

UnScreen has two parts:

• The desktop app runs in the background on your computer. It tracks how much time you spend on distracting/productive sites & apps.
• The browser extension allows us to make distracting sites less addictive.

Together, they allow us to quantify what works best to reduce your distraction.

We’re based in New York City, USA. Contact us, we'd love to hear from you.