TrueTo for ADHD

Android settings for ADHD

25 settings across 8 apps that reduce distraction, protect focus, and remove the executive function tax of managing your own phone. TrueTo applies them in one tap.

Spotify Canvas — the looping video behind songs — is engineered to hold visual attention. For ADHD, it competes with the audio for a brain that tracks movement involuntarily. Turning it off takes 5 taps, buried in Playback settings. There are 25 more settings like this across 8 apps.

Applying them yourself requires knowing which settings exist, where to find them across eight different apps, and remembering to act — exactly the sequence that executive dysfunction impairs. TrueTo knows the list, handles the navigation, and lets you decide which recommendations apply to you.

Three settings with the most immediate impact

Autoplay off (YouTube + Spotify) — directly addresses the hyperfocus trap. The most recognizable ADHD experience on this list.
Read Receipts off (WhatsApp) — RSD. The one most ADHD users feel viscerally before they've heard the explanation.
Canvas off (Spotify) — the most surprising. Covers app-specific settings no general guide touches.

Turning off Canvas, YouTube Autoplay, and WhatsApp Read Receipts takes 13 taps across three apps — each in a different settings menu. TrueTo does it in one.

You decide which recommendations apply to you. Accept the ones that make sense; skip the ones that don't. Any setting can be turned off at any time.

Get your ADHD profile when TrueTo launches

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What's in your ADHD profile

25 settings across 8 apps. Each includes a one-sentence explanation of why it matters for ADHD specifically.

Dimensions: S Stimulation · A Attention · T Transparency · C Content

Android System

Window / Transition / Animator Duration scales S

Every animation is a visual interrupt. At full speed they pull attention away from what you were doing. At 0.5× the UI gets out of the way.
Extra Dim S

The standard brightness floor is still too bright for a brain that's already overstimulated. Extra Dim removes the floor.
Per-app notifications A

The default is every app screams at you. ADHD needs a deliberate allowlist, not an ongoing opt-out process.

Spotify

counterintuitive: Canvas S

Looping video behind the playback controls is engineered to hold visual attention. You opened Spotify for audio. The video competes with it for a brain that tracks movement involuntarily.
counterintuitive: Autoplay C

When your playlist ends, Spotify continuing removes your natural exit point. For an ADHD brain, that exit point is the only moment you'll voluntarily stop.
Playlist privacy T

Public listening history is a low-level social monitoring loop. It doesn't hurt acutely, but it adds ambient self-consciousness that competes with focus.

YouTube

counterintuitive: Autoplay next video C

This is the mechanism behind 3-hour accidental YouTube sessions. ADHD hyperfocus + autoplay is the combination. Breaking it requires a deliberate next-video choice — which is also a deliberate continue-or-stop choice.
Playback in feeds S+C

Videos start playing the moment you scroll past them — before you've decided to watch them. That's the app making the consumption decision for you.
Notification frequency A

YouTube sends alerts for every upload from every subscribed channel. Instant delivery turns subscriptions into a notification flood.

Instagram

Quiet Mode A

Quiet Mode tells Instagram when it's allowed to push alerts. Without it, the app decides when your attention belongs to it.
Activity status (online visibility) T

Showing online status creates read-receipt pressure — people can see you're on Instagram instead of responding to them. RSD turns that into a source of anxiety.
Data Saver S+C

Prevents videos from pre-loading as you scroll. The brief visual lag before a video plays is friction — and friction is the only thing that breaks a scroll trance for an ADHD brain.

Read Receipts T

Blue ticks are an RSD delivery mechanism. The sender knows you read their message and didn't reply. For ADHD brains already managing guilt about response time, that creates a background anxiety loop that persists until you reply.
Last Seen T

Last Seen lets people calculate how long you've been online without answering them. Same RSD mechanism, broader scope.
Media Auto-Download C

Every photo and video that arrives automatically is content that arrived without your permission. Turning this off means you decide what to receive.
Group chat notifications A

Group chats generate noise at a rate no single contact does. The ADHD brain treats every ping as equally urgent — there's no automatic triage. Muting forces that triage to happen once, not continuously.

Slack

Notification schedule A

Without a schedule, Slack treats 11pm the same as 9am. Hard boundaries remove the always-on availability expectation that makes task-switching harder to resist.
Non-essential channel notifications A

Slack's default is everything is equally loud. ADHD can't filter signal from noise in real time. Muting forces that filtering to happen at setup time, when executive function is available.
Show images and files from linked websites S

Inline previews make Slack visually dense and unpredictable. Every new message might expand into a large image. Off keeps the workspace text-only and scannable.

counterintuitive: Autoplay videos C

Reddit's video autoplay starts the next clip without asking — same hyperfocus-trap mechanism as YouTube.
Community recommendations C

Reddit surfacing communities you don't follow expands your information surface without permission. Every new subreddit is another attention destination.
Trending posts C

Trending content is algorithmically chosen to maximize engagement, not to match what you came to Reddit for.

Chrome + GitHub Mobile

Discover / news feed (new tab) C

You opened a browser tab with a specific intent. The news feed activates before you type anything. For ADHD, this is a derailment at the highest-frequency moment in your day.
Site notification permissions A

Web apps accumulate notification permissions over time. None of them should be able to interrupt your phone unless you've explicitly decided they can.
Notification filter (GitHub Mobile) A

Default GitHub notifications are a high-volume stream across all repositories. ADHD doesn't need to know about trending repos — it needs to know when someone actually needs it.

Counterintuitive — feels right to keep on; data says turn it off.

Common questions

Why does my phone feel impossible to put down when I have ADHD?

Three mechanisms work together. Autoplay removes your natural exit point — when content keeps coming, there's no moment to stop. Notifications reset your attention recovery clock every 23 minutes on average. Animated feeds and Canvas give your brain constant visual input to track involuntarily. The combination means the phone is always pulling, and your executive function — the thing that lets you choose to stop — is already depleted.

What's the difference between app-level time restrictions and changing these settings?

Time restrictions block access entirely — all or nothing. They don't stop you from wanting to open the app; they just prevent it. These settings remove the activation energy for distraction without blocking anything. You can still open Spotify intentionally. You just won't get pulled in by a looping video the moment you do.

Why turn off Spotify Canvas if I have ADHD?

Canvas is optimized to hold visual attention. You opened Spotify for audio. The looping video behind the playback controls competes with the audio for a brain that tracks movement involuntarily. It's not that Canvas is harmful — it's that it's engineered to capture a specific kind of attention that ADHD brains have trouble deliberately releasing. Turning it off costs you nothing if you came for the music.

Do I have to apply all 25 settings or can I choose which ones?

You decide which apply to you. TrueTo shows you each recommendation with an explanation. Accept the ones that make sense; skip the ones that don't. Any setting applied through TrueTo can be toggled off at any time. The goal isn't a locked configuration — it's a starting point that reflects how your brain actually works.

How much faster is TrueTo than doing this manually?

Turning off Canvas, YouTube Autoplay, and WhatsApp Read Receipts takes 13 taps across three apps — spread across three different settings menus you have to navigate to separately. TrueTo does it in one.

Applied in one tap. Reversed whenever you want something different.