Comparison

SloMo vs Pull to Refresh

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

SloMo

Features
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You open your phone to check one thing. Before you know it, you’ve spent another half hour scrolling. SloMo helps you take back control of your screen time. Block distracting apps and unlock them by moving a little, or set a time lock when you need to focus. Small changes, at your own pace. BLOCK DISTRACTING APPS Choose the apps that pull you away from what you want to do. Group several apps under one rule and decide how you’ll unlock them. MOVE TO UNLOCK Earn your next scroll with push-ups, squats, pull-ups, steps, or a distance challenge. Set your goal, complete it, and unlock the apps covered by that rule. Camera-assisted exercise counting and step tracking help you follow your progress. MAKE ROOM FOR FOCUS Studying, working, or taking a break from your phone? Set a Time Lock for a fixed duration or until a chosen time. Start now or create a repeating schedule that fits your routine. CHECK YOUR PROGRESS AT A GLANCE Follow active Time Lock countdowns with Live Activities and widgets on supported iOS versions. See step and distance progress on your Lock Screen during challenges. UNDERSTAND YOUR SCREEN TIME See your daily app usage, most-used apps, and weekly comparisons. Notice where your time goes and choose which habits you want to change. BUILD A STREAK Completed workouts and Time Locks both count toward your daily streak. Look back at your history, track your personal best, and keep building on small wins. SHARE YOUR WINS Share workout unlocks, Time Lock progress, and weekly recaps as cards on your socials or in a group chat. Choose whether app names appear on individual result cards. GET STARTED WITHOUT AN ACCOUNT Core features work offline. Your rules, workout history, and fitness stats stay on your device. Camera images are processed on your device and are never recorded, stored, or uploaded. SloMo is free and supported by ads. It uses basic app-open analytics, and ad privacy choices are available in Settings where applicable. Requires iOS 16 or later. Live Activities require iOS 16.2 or later. Screen Time access is required for app blocking and usage reports. Camera, motion, and Health permissions are requested for features that use them. Less scrolling. More living.

About

Pull to Refresh

This app locks your most time-consuming applications until you complete physical exercises. Earn back minutes for your apps by doing push-ups, sit-ups, or other movements, with the camera accurately counting your reps. Your exercise data can be saved to Health.

Highlights
  • App time allowance setting
  • Exercise-based rep counting
  • Pose detection for accurate reps
  • Health app integration
  • Optional public leaderboard
  • Strict mode for enhanced blocking
Features
Read full description

Pull to refresh. Actually pull. Pick the apps that eat your day, give them an allowance, and when it runs out they lock. To get back in, you do reps. The camera counts them on your phone. HOW IT WORKS 1. Choose the apps. Instagram, TikTok, X, games — whatever you actually lose hours to. 2. Set the allowance. So many minutes a day, a few minutes an hour, or nothing at all. 3. Run out, and they shut. 4. Do a set. Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, pull-ups or jumping jacks. 5. Spend what you earned, on whichever app you were reaching for. THE COUNTING IS HONEST Reps are scored from your body's joint positions, not from your phone shaking in a pocket. A rep only counts on a full movement — down to depth and back — so half-reps score nothing, and the app tells you why instead of leaving you guessing. Shaking the phone pays exactly zero. Time is measured in real use of those apps, not on a clock. Put the phone down mid-scroll and the minutes you paid for wait for you — for at least half an hour, and four times as long as the unlock for bigger ones, up to 22 hours. NO VIDEO LEAVES YOUR PHONE Pose detection runs on the device. No video is recorded, stored or uploaded, and there is no account to make. iOS hands the app opaque tokens rather than names, so it can tell that you picked an app — never what you do inside it. What does leave goes through Apple: rep counts and badge progress to Game Center once you say yes, your name and numbers to the iCloud board if you join it, and a copy of your history to your own iCloud. IT COUNTS TWICE Finished sets can be saved to Health as workouts, so reps done here go to your Move ring and show up in Fitness with everything else. RACE SOMEONE Signed in to Game Center, you get its leaderboards — this week and all time — and nine badges to earn, under your Game Center name. Nothing is sent until you say yes. On iOS 26 and later, start a Rep Race with a friend from Game Center: the biggest single set done during the race wins. Not on Game Center? Join the iCloud board under any name you like; leaving deletes your row. PRO Free covers a whole working loop: one group of apps on a daily allowance, every exercise, rep counting, Health and the leaderboards. Forever. Pro makes the lock harder — it never makes it softer: - Strict mode. A rule you cannot switch off the moment you want to. Changing it costs a cooling-off period first, which is exactly when you would have caved. - Minutes per hour. Short check-ins instead of one long sitting. - As many rules as you like, with different limits for different apps. - Your whole history, with streaks. Money never buys screen time here; reps do. Pro is a subscription, renewing until cancelled, or a one-off payment for good. Manage or cancel any time in Settings. WORTH KNOWING Blocking uses Apple's Screen Time. You will be asked to grant it on first launch, and the camera when you do your first set. Deleting the app removes every lock, whatever you have bought — this is a speed bump you chose, not a cage. Terms of Use (EULA): https://pull-to-refresh.pages.dev/terms Privacy Policy: https://pull-to-refresh.pages.dev/privacy

Screenshots

SloMo4 screens
Pull to Refresh4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: SloMo at none against Pull to Refresh's 2. Pull to Refresh's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Pull to Refresh sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $12.99 per month. SloMo asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SloMo ships an update weekly, Pull to Refresh every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 18, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
SloMo versus Pull to Refresh: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSloMoPull to Refresh
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (8 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—8 — better
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
Monetization—Freemium
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS16.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size40 MB9 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperArmando Jr PagkalinawanIvan Chernoknizhnikov

In-app purchases

None

SloMo

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Pull to Refresh

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly$12.991 Month
  • Yearly$44.991 Year

Questions

Is SloMo free?
SloMo is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Pull to Refresh free?
Pull to Refresh is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do SloMo or Pull to Refresh have ads?
Neither SloMo nor Pull to Refresh shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SloMo or Pull to Refresh?
SloMo ships an update weekly, and Pull to Refresh every 3 days. Most recently, SloMo was updated on October 25, 2026 and Pull to Refresh on October 18, 2026.

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