Peoplebox vs Precursor
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Peoplebox
This app helps you remember the important people in your life by storing private notes and setting follow-up reminders. It offers smart organization, freshness indicators, and privacy features, keeping all your data on your device.
- Private notes timeline for contacts
- Follow-up reminders
- Smart tags for organization
- Stale contact detection
- Freshness indicators
- Face ID app lock
- CSV export
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Your contacts tell you who someone is. Peoplebox helps you remember the relationship — what matters, when to follow up, and who needs a check-in. Keep private notes on the people in your life, set follow-up reminders, and never lose touch with the ones who matter. Everything stays on your iPhone. No account. No cloud. No sync. No analytics. Just your notes and your people. KEY FEATURES - Private notes timeline for every contact, with optional interaction type (meeting, call, coffee, email, event) - Read-only access to your iOS Contacts so you can attach notes without changing your address book - Smart tags to organize people by Client, Friend, Family, or any custom category you create - Follow-up reminders with multiple lead-time alerts (3 days, 1 day, day-of) - Stale contact detection: get a gentle nudge when you haven't talked to someone in a while - Per-tag "haven't talked to" thresholds, so you can treat close family differently from acquaintances - Smart Groups that automatically surface favorites, overdue follow-ups, and contacts you have been neglecting - Freshness indicators at a glance: green for fresh, yellow, orange, red for long-silent - Home screen widgets showing your upcoming follow-ups - Face ID app lock for an extra layer of privacy - CSV export of your notes for your own backup - No login, no account, no data collection PEOPLEBOX PRO CSV export and Face ID / Touch ID app lock are available to everyone. Upgrade to Peoplebox Pro to unlock unlimited contacts, custom tags, Smart Groups, home screen widgets, and flexible follow-up reminders. - Monthly: USD 1.99 per month - Annual: USD 14.99 per year (1-week free trial for new subscribers) - Lifetime: USD 19.99 one-time purchase Payment will be charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period at the stated price. Manage or cancel in Account Settings. A free trial, if offered, automatically converts to a paid subscription unless canceled at least 24 hours before it ends. Lifetime access is a one-time, non-consumable purchase and does not renew. Privacy Policy: https://app-legal-pages.vercel.app/peoplebox/privacy Terms of Service: https://app-legal-pages.vercel.app/peoplebox/terms
Precursor
This app offers a unique approach to screen time management by setting hourly limits for app usage. It aims to break the cycle of daily limit exhaustion and impulsive overrides by providing a sustainable, guilt-free solution that resets limits every hour.
- Set hourly app limits
- Automatic hourly limit resets
- Customizable limits by day
- Friction to prevent impulsive overrides
- Private by design, on-device processing
- Optional Precursor+ upgrade
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Most screen time solutions give you one daily limit. Often we spend the whole limit by late morning, leaving us locked out of our apps for the rest of the day and feeling stranded; all it takes is one vulnerable moment and we hit that tempting "Ignore Limit For Today" button. That one impulsive moment costs you not only your time, but also the motivation to keep working on whatever it is you meant to do. PRECURSOR BREAKS THE CYCLE With Precursor you can finally set an hourly app limit. For example, you allot yourself five minutes of social media scrolling per hour, and you can trust that Precursor will reset that limit at the top of the next hour. Every hour, all day, automatically. You get the brainrot break you needed, but the scroll ends right before it turns into a mindless habit. Your brain doesn't panic because you know you'll get more time to scroll in just a short hour. So you never have to feel guilty for ignoring a limit ever again. No streaks. No guilt. No shame. Just a sustainable screen time solution your day can lean on. HOW IT WORKS - Pick the apps (or group of apps) that you'd like to limit and give them an hourly allowance: 5, 10, or 15 minutes (Precursor+ extends limits up to 30). - Pick the specific days you want your limits to run (for example, on weekdays you can set stricter limits and on weekends you can set more lenient limits). - When the allowance is spent, those apps get blocked. - At the top of the next hour, your limit resets. - You set your limits once and that screen time rhythm repeats every hour, all day, automatically; so you never have to think about them again. - Precursor also allows you to stop your limits, for whatever reason, but we add some friction to help you in those impulsive moments: 1) Before stopping your limits Precursor will prompt you to write a short reflection on why you need to in this moment. 2) You can add a passcode to lock in your limit (consider allowing a trusted person in your life to set it for you if you know you'll likely bypass it). 3) Unlike other screen time solutions that give you an "ignore limit" prompt right there in the blocked app screen, Precursor requires that you intentionally open the Precursor app to stop your limits. Restrictions and punishments don't work. They never have. Precursor is built on one principle: Real change comes from one's own ability to be honest and accountable. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Precursor is built on Apple's Screen Time technology. Your app choices are opaque tokens: we never see which apps you pick, and neither can anyone else. Your usage history stays on your phone, and Insights are computed on-device. There are no accounts and no ads. Optional, anonymous usage analytics are off unless you turn them on, and they still never include which apps you choose. HONEST BY DEFAULT Precursor is free to use, with an optional Precursor+ upgrade for more groups, other reset windows, longer limits, scheduled active hours, and Deep Focus sessions. Available as a one-time Lifetime purchase if you prefer to own your productivity tools rather than subscribe. Monthly and Yearly both start with one month free. No subscription is required to keep the core, and the terms are spelled out plainly before anything renews. Please note: Deleting Precursor removes every limit. Precursor is an independently developed app by a one-person studio, Precursor Labs. Precursor+ Monthly and Yearly are auto-renewable subscriptions. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation of purchase. A subscription renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and you can manage or cancel anytime in your Apple ID settings. Lifetime is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Privacy Policy: https://precursorlabs.studio/privacy.html Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Apple's Terms and Policies: http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Precursor at every 6 days against Peoplebox's every 4 months. Precursor also leads on ratings volume (5 vs 1). On price, rating, 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. Peoplebox sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Precursor sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Peoplebox against 5.0 for Precursor. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Precursor has 5 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Peoplebox ships an update every 4 months, Precursor every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on September 26, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Peoplebox | Precursor |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 5 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 17.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 3 MB | 17 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 慧慧 高 | Precursor Labs |
Customer experience
Peoplebox
Precursor
In-app purchases
Peoplebox
- Peoplebox Pro Monthly$1.991 Month
- Peoplebox Pro Annual7 Days trial$14.991 Year
Precursor
- Monthly1 Month trial$4.991 Month
- Yearly1 Month trial$49.991 Year
- Lifetime$99.99








