DOTS vs ICINA
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
DOTS
Visualize your finite time and protect it from distractions. Set daily app limits, schedule downtime, and track reclaimed hours to live more intentionally. Features include a life grid, focus mode, and weekly reflections.
- Life grid visualization
- Focus mode to block distractions
- Daily app time limits
- Scheduled downtime
- Weekly reflections
- Time reclaimed tracking
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You have one life. About 4,000 weeks, if you're lucky. DOTS shows you every single one - as a grid of dots - so the time you have stops being an abstraction and starts feeling real. Then it helps you protect it. THE LIFE GRID Each dot is one week of your life. See the weeks you've already lived, the one you're in right now, and the ones still ahead. It's a quiet, powerful reminder that your time is finite - and worth defending. FOCUS MODE Start a focus session and DOTS shields the apps that pull you away. No willpower battles, no endless scrolling. Just the space to do what actually matters to you. DAILY LIMITS Set a daily time budget for the apps that eat your hours. When you hit your limit, DOTS steps in with a calm reminder of the commitment you made to yourself not a guilt trip, just a nudge back to your intentions. MINDFUL BLOCKING Choose the apps and categories you want to manage. DOTS uses Apple's Screen Time technology to block them on your terms, for the time you decide. Everything is opt-in and fully in your control. WEEKLY REFLECTIONS Look back on how you spent your time, notice your patterns, and set intentions for the week ahead. Small, honest check-ins that compound into real change. BUILT FOR YOU, AND ONLY YOU DOTS manages your own device, for your own goals. It is not a parental-control or tracking app. Your usage data stays private - stored on your device and synced only to your personal iCloud. We don't collect it, sell it, or share it. WIND-DOWN The "just ten minutes" that becomes two hours, fixed. Set a bedtime window and a short allowance. You get your few minutes, a gentle heads-up as the time runs low, then your apps wind down until morning. Keep it and your sleep streak grows. SCHEDULED DOWNTIME Block the apps that pull you away on a schedule that fits your life - work hours, school, dinner, deep work. Set it once and it runs every day, on its own. PER-APP LIMITS Give each app its own daily budget instead of one shared timer. Keep essentials like Maps, your bank, and Messages always allowed, and get a heads-up a few minutes before a limit is reached. TIME WON BACK See the hours you reclaim from focus sessions and protected nights add up as a growing field of green dots. The cost of a screen is easy to feel - now the winnings are too. LIFE LIVED A ten-second daily check-in: did you actually use the time you saved the way you meant to? It builds a quiet record of the days you showed up for your own life, not just the time you saved. MILESTONES Count down to the dates that matter - a birthday, a goal, a someday - in weeks. Seal a letter to your future self that opens on the very day it arrives. ON YOUR LOCK SCREEN AND WITH SIRI Follow your focus countdown live on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island, and start or end a session hands-free with a Shortcut. WHY DOTS IS DIFFERENT Most screen-time apps treat the symptom. DOTS starts with the why: a clear, visceral picture of how precious your time is. Once you feel that, blocking an app stops feeling like a restriction and starts feeling like a choice - your choice. Privacy Policy: https://novarch.lol/dots-privacy Terms of Use (EULA): https://novarch.lol/dots-terms Your life. Your time. Your choice. Download DOTS and start protecting the weeks you have left.
ICINA
Securely store important personal information, legal documents, and final wishes for loved ones. Features guided entries, encrypted vaults, and a personal letter to ensure your legacy is handled with care.
- Guided entry for documents and wishes
- Encrypted vault with no cloud sync
- Personal letter to recipient
- Printable handoff packet
- Document scanning with autofill (Pro)
- Expiry reminders (Pro)
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Some day, someone who loves you will need to find everything you kept in your head — the will, the policy that pays the mortgage, who to call first, your final wishes. ICINA is where you put it all, safely, in advance, as an act of care. FOR THE ONE WHO LOVES Build your vault the way you'd leave notes on the fridge. Guided entries walk you through legal documents, money and banking, insurance, medical directives, IDs, property, digital accounts, the people to call, and your final wishes. Write a personal letter to the person who will open it — the app treats that letter as the most important thing in the vault, because it is. Everything you write is auto-saved as an encrypted draft, so nothing is lost mid-thought. When you're ready, seal the vault: ICINA shows you exactly what changed since you last sealed it, then exports a single encrypted file — and a printable handoff packet with their name on it. FOR THE ONE WHO IS LOVED They arrive with a passphrase on a piece of paper, on one of the hardest days of their life. ICINA knows the difference. When they open the vault, your letter comes first — before any list, before any document. Then a calm summary of what you left them, what to do now, and a gentle "start here" order for the first days: who to call, where the important papers are. No paywalls. No upsells. No clutter. Just what you prepared, the way you meant it. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Encrypted on your device with strong, modern cryptography. • No cloud. No sync. No accounts. No tracking. Your data never leaves your phone unless you export it. • Export a single encrypted .icina file and share the passphrase only with the person you trust — on paper, in person, however you choose. PRO ICINA Pro unlocks document scanning with intelligent autofill — processed entirely on your device by Apple's on-device models, never sent anywhere — plus unlimited items, file attachments, expiry reminders, and the printable handoff packet. Annual or one-time lifetime purchase. ICINA. For the one who loves, and the one who is loved.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: DOTS at every 8 days against ICINA's every 3 weeks. ICINA's advantage is iOS requirement (17.6 vs 26.1). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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. DOTS sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 7 days and ICINA sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $19.99 per year. 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 DOTS against 5.0 for ICINA. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively.
DOTS ships an update every 8 days, ICINA every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | DOTS | ICINA |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.1 | 17.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 53 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Novarch LLC | Michael Chung |
Customer experience
DOTS
ICINA
In-app purchases
DOTS
- Weekly Premium$1.997 Days
- Monthly Premium$4.991 Month
- Yearly Premium$29.991 Year
- Lifetime$49.99
ICINA
- ICINA Pro14 Days trial$19.991 Year
- ICINA Pro — Lifetime$79.99









