Stillcraft / Apps / Marbles
A jar with a marble for every Saturday until your child turns eighteen. Every week one leaves the jar, coloured if you spent time together and grey if you didn't. Beside it, an honest mirror: the evening's minutes on the phone next to the minutes with the children. When you're too tired to think, it hands you something to do in the next ten minutes. Free, no ads, no account, no internet permission.
Android 9+ · Free · No internet permission · English & Русский
Every Saturday until eighteen is a marble. This week's marble fills with colour as the time together adds up, in the colour of what you did most, and on Sunday night it goes into the tray, bright or grey. Tim Urban worked out in The Tail End that by the end of school about 93% of the in-person time with your parents is already spent.
Within your family hours, two lines for every evening: the phone and the children. Evening by evening, this week against the last, and the apps that took the evenings. No scores, no advice: the numbers say it.
Start time together and put the phone face down. The minutes you pick it up are left out, measured by the phone's own usage history; glances under 30 seconds don't count. The optional shield sends a quiet word with a child's name when the phone takes too long in the family hours.
Empty, some or full; at home or out. An empty battery gets ideas you can do lying down. A deck of sixty by age, five-minute rituals for the way to school, dinner, the bath and bedtime, and forty questions for the edge of the bed.
Dinosaurs, a friend called Sonya, afraid of the hoover: "Ask about…" in the evening and a monthly check. With brothers and sisters around, it shows who hasn't had you to themselves for a while and helps plan it.
On the 1st, the month's letter: days together, what they said, the firsts, the pictures, the mirror's month. A month or a year becomes a small printable book.
| When | What Marbles offers |
|---|---|
| On the way to school | A five-minute ritual: a story in turns, I spy |
| Getting home | One idea for the evening, at the time you usually start |
| In the family hours | The shield, if the phone takes too long |
| At dinner | Rose and thorn, would you rather |
| At bedtime | A question for the edge of the bed; the answer kept in their words |
| Thursday | What are you doing on Saturday? |
| The 1st | The month's letter |
On Xiaomi (MIUI / HyperOS), Huawei, Samsung and some other phones, allow Autostart for Marbles and remove battery limits so the reminders and the shield arrive on time.
JDK 17+ (Android Studio's bundled JBR works) and the Android SDK. The jar and the marbles are drawn on a Compose canvas, nothing else to install.
git clone https://github.com/bigdevwhale/marbles.git cd marbles ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest # unit tests ./gradlew assembleDebug # app.marbles.dev, installs next to a release ./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo # app.marbles.demo with a made-up family ./gradlew testDebugUnitTest -Prender # the screens, as PNGs
It's an old story: a man worked out he had about a thousand Saturdays left and kept a marble for each in a jar. A childhood holds about 940. The week's marble counts all the time together that week, not only Saturday.
No. It shows two numbers side by side and never says whether they're good. There are no streaks; a missed week is a grey marble and "It happens."
Which apps were in front and for how long. Marbles keeps only the minutes per app for each evening, on the phone, and has no internet permission to send them anywhere.
Settings → Back up saves everything, pictures included, into one zip. Restore it on the new phone.
How many Saturdays you have left, and what you'll do with them.
The mindfulness multi-tool: breathing, Wim Hof, a bell, practices and a journal.
A strict focus timer that actually blocks distractions.
Don't drift apart from the people who matter.
Quit a habit, one day at a time.
Turn your days into a quest.
A quiet place for your mind.
Intermittent fasting, made warm and simple.
Your city, hidden in mist. Walk to reveal it.
Letters to your future self. Sealed until the day comes.
Every win deserves a little praise.
Goals under a night sky: 17 methods in one app.
Earn obols with useful apps, pay Charon for the feed.
One light, many colours: choose who you are in every part of life.
Cold water, contrast showers and the sauna, tempered like steel.
Chores as spells in a wizard's tower: keep the floors bright, wake the helpers.
A pixel-art familiar that feeds on the pages you read.
Photos and clips struck into pixel-art treasure in a dragon's cave.
A film camera for the family: shoot now, see the prints tomorrow.
They grow up faster than the photos do.
A merry app about death and growing old, in the spirit of the Day of the Dead.
Vows sealed with wax, and a ladder that makes them hard to break.
A scriptorium for what you learn: your own words, fading ink, and memory that holds.
A museum for what you want to remember: dig it up, clean it, put it on show.
Race your own ghost at everyday tasks: splits, medals and the Games.
Intrusive thoughts as ships: the lighthouse beam, the evening watch, forecasts checked.
A magic lantern deals the glass; parent and child make up the bedtime tale.
A date night for two on a night train: a conductor's questions, the phone as the table between you.
The same questions to your child, yourself or a grandparent, year after year, laid as a mosaic.
Your mind is a kite on a string. A few soft tugs a day bring it back to here.
Found a bug, missing a feature, or want it in your language? Tell us on GitHub.
Open an issue