About Tolby

Tolby is built on three beliefs.

The decision is yours. No one can make you do anything, and a blocker only delays a choice you still have to make. Tolby is a tool for your own self-regulation. It doesn't do the regulating for you.

Tolby never adds shame. Shame makes people hide, avoid and lie, to themselves and to their tools. People bring it in from everywhere else. Tolby won't add any.

The only target is your own. You do something because you want to, not to make a number go up. So Tolby has nothing for you to chase except what you said you want.

• Tolby asks. It never blocks a site or an app.
• Your answer stands. Tolby doesn't argue with you or override you.
• You decide what counts. Rest and play are plans too, if you chose them.
• You never have to explain yourself. "I don't want to right now" is an answer.
• Going off plan is part of it. Notice, come back, move on.
• No scores, no streaks, no report card.
• No person watches your screen. There is no version for employers or managers.

Tolby works in three steps: you say what you're about to do, it reads your screen on your Mac, and it asks only if what it sees stops matching.

1. 01Say what you're about to do, in your own words, like "Essay draft in Docs" or "YouTube until this video ends".
2. 02A model on your Mac compares your screen with your plan. While they match, you hear nothing.
3. 03When they stop matching, Tolby asks a short question in a chat. You decide what happens next.

Tolby costs some battery, because a model runs on your Mac as often as once a minute. A lighter model is being worked on.

• Not a blocker. It can't stop you, by design.
• Not a tracker. It doesn't chart where your day went.
• Not therapy. It doesn't treat anything.
• Not proven. Nobody has measured whether Tolby improves anything, and it will sometimes ask when you were fine. For its maker, the time a wrong check-in costs has been far smaller than the time it wins back from rabbit holes.

Your screen is read on your Mac. Screen recordings and the text read off your screen never leave it. On the free version, your plan and the chat stay on your Mac too.

On Tolby+, the online coach checks in as often as once a minute while you're active. It gets text only, never images: your plan, the chat, Tolby's notes about you, the app and window title, and a short note about what's on screen. If you turn them on, your current and next calendar event and Todoist tasks go too. ID, card and bank numbers and anything shaped like a password are filtered out first. That's a filter, not a guarantee. The AI providers run on zero data retention. Tolby's server never stores what you or the coach say. It keeps license, billing and usage records until you ask to delete them. Nobody trains on your data.

To keep everything on your Mac, turn on "Keep the coach on this Mac" in Settings. The full details are in the privacy policy.

Tolby is for you if you've tapped past a limit or uninstalled a blocker, if you lose hours to rabbit holes you didn't pick, or if you want a question you can answer instead of a wall.

Tolby isn't for you if Screen Time or a blocker already works (Screen Time is free, so use it), if you want software to make the decision for you, or if you don't want any app reading your screen. It also needs an Apple Silicon Mac with 12GB or more of memory. Intel Macs aren't supported. Support for Macs with less memory is being worked on, and Windows is planned.

Tolby is made by Everett Wilber, an independent developer with ADHD, who built it for himself first.

I've always struggled to get my work done. In college it started costing me. My friends seemed to get by fine while I could barely stay on track. I started by having Claude check in on me, and it helped enough that I spent a summer building a real app for it. Selling it pays for making it better, for me and for you.

Everett Wilber

Contact: hello@tolby.app.

• Requirements:Apple Silicon, 12GB or more of memory, macOS 26 or later. The model takes about 6 to 7GB, and recordings about 5 to 7GB at the default one week.
• Tolby:free. The whole app, with the coach on your Mac.
• Tolby+:$8 / month or $72 / year. The same coach, off your battery. The founding price stays locked while you're subscribed.
• Tolby+ Extra:$20 / month or $180 / year, with room to spare so the online coach is there all month.

If you go offline, or Tolby+ lapses, Tolby switches to the coach on your Mac.

See all plans.