Left vs Fluid Friction
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Left
Visualize your time with customizable widgets for your Home Screen, Lock Screen, and StandBy. Track life progress, countdowns to important events, and monitor habits with streak tracking. Offers a clean and visually appealing way to stay aware of your time.
- Time progress widgets (year, week, day)
- Life progress tracking
- Event countdowns
- Habit and streak tracking
- Customizable widget styles and colors
- Apple Calendar sync
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Left is a time-awareness app built on one idea: your time is limited, and seeing it changes how you use it. Left turns time into something you can see, then helps you act on it with habits, streaks, countdowns, and a planner for your day. TIME LEFT See where you are in the year, month, week, day, hour, and your life. Each unit is a symbol; the past dims, what remains stays in view. Your life in weeks, year progress, and life progress, made tangible. Choose dots, symbols, colors, and layouts. A quiet, honest way to face limited time without it becoming morbid. HABITS, STREAKS & AIMS Left is a habit tracker for the person you are trying to become. Build habits on any schedule: daily, several times a day, weekly, monthly, or custom. Track streaks and protect them, count the days since anything that matters, and set reminders so nothing slips. And you don't have to do it alone: share a habit or streak with a friend, keep each other accountable, and send kudos, cheers, and encouragement when it counts. With aims, you have a flexible goal tracker for anything you can count, helping you build up or cut down. Stay on track and see your progress every day. AHEAD - COUNTDOWNS & DATES Add the dates that pull you forward: trips, birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, weddings, deadlines, retirement, and personal milestones. Count down to each one, import from Apple Calendar, and track both the days until and the days since. New: every Ahead date now has its own to-do list, so you can plan the small tasks that make the date happen and check them off as it approaches. Share an Ahead date with a friend, follow it side by side, comment, and add to-dos together on joint dates. PLANNER Planner pulls everything that matters into one beautiful, time-first view: your habits, streaks, Ahead dates, Apple Calendar events, Apple Reminders, weather, sleep, and workouts, together at last. Not another calendar, but a clear, calm picture of what the day is actually asking of you. Because everything lives in one place instead of five apps, Planner is a quiet ally for ADHD minds: see the whole day at a glance and miss nothing. Two new widgets come with it: a Planner widget and a Calendar widget for your Home Screen. FASTING TOOL A simple yet beautiful fasting tool inside Left. Pick a fasting window, start it in a tap, and follow every fast live from your Lock Screen, widgets and the Dynamic Island. Your history and stats are all there too. WHY LEFT Other apps give you habits without design, or aesthetics without depth. Left combines both: the widget range, the design quality, and the full set of time tools, in one app made with restraint and taste. Left requires a Premium plan to use its features. Choose a weekly, yearly plan or a one-time lifetime purchase to unlock everything. Terms: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Fluid Friction
This app introduces deliberate friction to prevent mindless scrolling on social media and other distracting apps. It offers customizable shields, timed sessions, and NFC tag integration to help users regain control over their screen time and improve focus.
- Deliberate friction for scrolling
- App and website blocking
- Timed sessions with cooldowns
- NFC tag integration for unlocking
- Focus timer and Pomodoro sessions
- Calm Score and progress tracking
- Customizable themes
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Mindless scrolling stops working with Fluid Friction. Open Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, X, Snapchat, Facebook or LinkedIn inside Fluid Friction, or add any website you choose, and the feed pushes back. Fluid rises from the edge of the screen against your thumb. Drag through it until a bubble forms and rises off the screen. Only then does the next post arrive. Cross the threshold on purpose, or set the phone down. It doesn't shame you. It just makes you mean it. WHY IT WORKS Infinite feeds run on autopilot. Fluid Friction slips one deliberate moment between you and the scroll, so doomscrolling becomes a decision instead of a reflex. No workout to film, no quiz to pass, no habit checklist to clear first: the friction lives inside the scroll itself. Dial it from gentle to intense, set scroll limits per app, and let YouTube friction fire on Shorts only. CALM SHIELDS FOR YOUR OTHER APPS Block any native app, or a website, with Screen Time. Instead of a wall of shame you get a calm, warm screen, a clear count of the opens you chose to keep, a cooldown between opens, and a breathing, math or passphrase moment before you go in. Timed sessions count down right in the Dynamic Island and the shield returns when time is up. One toggle also blocks adult websites. Strict when you ask for it, dignified always. KEEP THE CHATS, SKIP THE RABBIT HOLE Hide Reels, Shorts, Stories, Explore and For You while messages keep working. Open apps to a calmer landing page, follow only the people you chose, hide recommendations and comments on YouTube, or go grayscale across every feed. Multiple accounts with separate sessions, YouTube background play and picture in picture are all built in, so the calmer way is also the comfortable way. TAP & SCAN Turn any NFC tag you already own into a physical key: a sticker, a card, even a transit pass. Tap to lock your distracting apps, tap to release them, or require a scan to unlock a shield. No extra hardware to buy; a QR code or a barcode in your kitchen works too. WAKE UP WITHOUT THE FEED An alarm that ends with a scan, not a scroll. Dismiss it with your tag or a barcode across the room, answer a quick wake challenge, and let a morning block hold the feeds until you are up. Wind down at night, track your wake streak, and earn 25 honest milestones. Snooze stays off unless you turn it on. On iOS 26 the alarm rings like the built-in clock; on earlier versions it alerts through notifications. SEE YOURSELF CLEARLY A Calm Score and Brainy, your small clay companion, reflect how your scrolling actually went. Real Screen Time numbers, weekly recaps, and tailored suggestions you can apply with one tap, like a schedule for the hour that always gets you. FOCUS WHEN IT COUNTS Focus timer, Pomodoro sessions, and a Focus Bank that turns focused minutes into earned, deliberate breaks. Breaks keep the feeds blocked by default, and the countdown lives in the Dynamic Island. MAKE IT YOURS 91 bubble themes, from aurora to plasma, with mystery unlocks and matching app icons. A quiet rank ladder climbs from Copper to Champion as you show up for yourself, and it never punishes a missed day. Home screen widgets too, including a minimalist launcher that routes tempting apps through the wave. PRIVATE AND FAIR No ads. No tracking. Your usage stays on your device. Every tool is free: the friction, the shields, the alarm, the insights. Fluid Pro, if you ever want it, unlocks themes and comfort extras like dark mode, with a 7 day free trial. MADE BY TWIN BROTHERS We're Manfred and Gustav. We built Fluid Friction because we needed it ourselves, and we kept the parts that matter calm, honest and respectful of your attention. No nagging, no guilt trips, no tricks. The wave is rising. Scroll like you mean it. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://fluidfriction.app/ios/privacy Terms of Service: https://fluidfriction.app/ios/terms
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Left at 4.6 against Fluid Friction's 4.1. Left also leads on ratings volume (461 vs 7) and update cadence (every 3 days vs every 10 days). Fluid Friction's advantage is monetization model (freemium vs paid) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Left sells 28 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per 7 days and Fluid Friction sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Left holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Left has 461 ratings behind it against 7, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 73% of Left's written reviews are positive against 75% of Fluid Friction's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Left ships an update every 3 days, Fluid Friction every 10 days. Both last shipped on October 25, 2026.
| Parameter | Left | Fluid Friction |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (461 ratings) — better | 4.1 (7 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 73.2% of reviews | 75.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 461 — better | 7 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 10 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Freemium — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 246 MB | 55 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Cntxt Limited | Gustav Mtenji Bergdal Mjengwa |
Customer experience
Left
Fluid Friction
Bugs and requests
Left
Reported bugs
3 issues- Widget not working
- Blank screen on widget after update
- Percentage left showing -inf%
Requested features
5 requests- Custom lifespan input
- Ability to set custom milestones
- Widget color customization
- Life widget
- Ability to track minutes left in the day
Fluid Friction
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Left
- Left Premium$0.997 Days
- Left Premium$2.997 Days
- Left Premium2 variants$3.997 Days
Show 11 moreShow fewer
- Left Premium7 Days trial$8.997 Days
- LEGEND$8.991 Year
- Left Premium7 Days trial$19.991 Year
- Left Premium$19.997 Days
- Left Premium2 variants$24.991 Year
- Left Premium7 Days trial$24.991 Year
- Left Premium$29.991 Year
- Left Premium7 Days trial$29.991 Year
- Left Premium$34.991 Year
- Left Premium7 Days trial2 variants$34.991 Year
- Thanks!$39.991 Year
- Left+$0.99
- Awesome$1.99
- Left+$2.99
Show 11 moreShow fewer
- Left+$3.99
- Legend$4.99
- Left+ Thanks$5.99
- Left+$6.99
- Left+$7.99
- Left+$8.99
- Left Premium$12.99
- Left Premium$29.99
- Left Premium2 variants$49.99
- Left Premium2 variants$69.99
- Left Premium$149.00
Fluid Friction
- Monthly7 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Annual7 Days trial$39.991 Year









