The five steps
This is the real onboarding order, not a simplification of it. About three minutes, and the only step that can slow you down is step two, because it is the one where you choose where your material already lives.
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Name what you’re learning
A goal, in your own words. A bounded one you can finish, or something ongoing that never quite ends. Everything after this hangs off it.
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Connect where you already keep notes
Notion, AnkiDroid, or any MCP-compatible LLM endpoint of your own (Todoist is coming soon). Or skip it and name a topic and let Popcue write the deck. Every card shows where it came from.
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Pick the apps to wrap
Any installed app, not a fixed blocklist. The feed, the shorts, the group chat, whatever actually takes you. Each one gets its own ratio and its own hours.
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Set the ratio, not a lockdown
Five out of ten launches, randomized, or whatever you want. Set active hours so it never interrupts you at 1am. A pause, not a prison.
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Grant two permissions
Usage access, so it knows when one of the apps you picked opens. Draw over other apps, so the card can be the thing on screen. Each is explained before the system dialog, and nothing else is required.
After that the first real card appears and you are in the app. The mechanic from here is described in full on how it works, and the connectors behind step two are on your tools.
The two permissions
An app that interrupts the thing you do all day is allowed to ask for things. This section is the longest on the page because this is the single claim we most want you to check rather than take on trust, and because it is the one place where a blocker in this category can differ from its rivals in a way that is verifiable rather than asserted.
- Usage access
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Android’s
PACKAGE_USAGE_STATSpermission, listed in Settings as Usage access. Popcue uses it to notice that one of the apps you chose has just come to the foreground, and nothing else. It reads the fact that an app started. It reads nothing about what happens inside it: no messages, no browsing history, no location, no clipboard. - Draw over other apps
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Android’s
SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOWpermission, listed in Settings as Display over other apps. This is what lets the card be the thing on screen instead of the app you were opening, rather than a notification you can swipe away. Without it Popcue could tell you something was due; with it, the card can be the interrupt. - No AccessibilityService, and that is the point
- Popcue does not use Android’s AccessibilityService API. That API is the broadest permission an Android app can hold: it can see the screen, read what is on it, and act on it anywhere, including inside your banking app and your password manager. It is also the API that One Sec’s public Play listing documents using (checked 2026-09-30), and it is the one Android reviewers object to most, because a permission that wide has no legitimate reason to be granted for a blocker. Popcue gets the same result from two narrow, revocable permissions instead, and you can see that difference in your own Settings.
- Nothing else is required
- Notifications if you turn on reminders, photo access on Android 12 and older to attach an image, and AnkiDroid access if you connect AnkiDroid: all optional, and asked for only when you use the feature that needs them. On a phone where you use none of those, the granted list is exactly two entries.
How to check it yourself, in Settings
Do not take this section on our word. Android shows you every permission an app holds, granted or not, and the list is short enough to read in ten seconds:
- Open Settings, then Apps. On some Android versions there is a See all apps step in between.
- Find Popcue in the list and open it.
- Tap Permissions. You will see every permission Popcue holds, and whether each is allowed or not.
- Check Usage access and Display over other apps. Both should be allowed once you have finished setup.
- Look for anything else. There should be nothing required. Notifications and photo access only appear if you have used the feature that needs them.
If a permission ever changes, you changed it: revoking a permission takes one tap from that same screen, and Popcue cannot grant itself one.
The limits of this claim, stated plainly. Popcue can show you that it holds two permissions and not a third. It cannot make you trust what the code does with the two it holds, and any vendor saying otherwise is overselling. What the Settings screen does settle is the narrow, checkable part of the question, which is the part that usually matters: how much of your phone an app can see, and whether it can be undone by you.
Getting your phone back
Any self-applied blocker should be reversible by the person holding the phone, and Popcue’s is. Three ways, in ascending order of completeness:
- Pause a single app. The app stays wrapped and stops interrupting, for as long as you want.
- Set its ratio to zero. It then never fires for that app, permanently, while everything else keeps working.
- Turn Popcue off from Settings. One switch, and every wrapped app is a normal app again.
No email, no support ticket, no approval, and no fee. There is no password to recover, because there is no password to set: nothing about Popcue is remote, and Popcue will never charge you a password-recovery fee to get back into your own phone.
The honest complement to that: on a device you control, you can also uninstall Popcue or revoke both permissions from Android at any time. Any blocker is bypassable by someone who owns the phone, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. What Popcue removes is the in-app route: you cannot skip the card, and there is no setting that adds one.
If something is not working
These are the four things that actually go wrong, in rough order of how often they do.
The interrupt never appears
Three checks, in this order. First, both permissions are granted: Settings, then Apps, then Popcue, then Permissions, and Usage access and Display over other apps both show as allowed. Second, the app you are opening is actually in your wrapped list, with a ratio above zero and active hours that include the current time. Third, Popcue is excluded from battery optimisation, which is the fix for most remaining cases on Android and is the subject of the next answer.
It interrupts far too often
Lower the ratio on the app that is bothering you. The ratio is per app, so you can leave a hard one high and bring down the one that has become irritating. If it is the time of day rather than the frequency, set active hours on that app or on that goal, and Popcue will not interrupt you outside them. Setting a ratio to zero switches that app off entirely, and pausing it does the same thing temporarily.
Popcue stops noticing apps on a Xiaomi, Oppo or Redmi
This is the best-documented class of problem with Android blockers, and it is an operating system behaviour rather than a Popcue bug. Those manufacturers ship aggressive battery managers that kill background observers, so Popcue’s usage access stops seeing launches and the interrupt goes quiet. The fix is to exclude Popcue from battery optimisation and to set it to autostart (the setting is usually called Auto-start, Battery optimisation, or App launch under the phone’s Battery or Security settings). On stock Android there is nothing extra to do, which is why this shows up almost entirely on those brands. If a manufacturer keeps killing it despite that, say so through the report form: it is a real limitation and we would rather know about it than have it look like the product simply does not work.
How do I get back to zero interruptions?
Pause the app, set its ratio to zero, or turn Popcue off from Settings, in that order of permanence. If you want the two permissions gone as well, revoke them at Settings, then Apps, then Popcue, then Permissions, which returns your phone to a state with no Popcue foothold on it at all.
Before you try: Popcue is not on the Play Store yet
There is no public listing, so there is nothing to install and no store page to read reviews on, and no ratings or install count to check either. The Android and web builds exist and are being verified; the remaining work is Play Console setup, a release signing key, and a compliance launch gate. Join the waitlist and you will hear when it ships, and you will get the build before the public release.