Honest comparison
Skerrick vs one sec
one sec has something nobody else in this category has, which is a peer-reviewed study of its own mechanic. Skerrick is built on the part of that literature that gets quoted less often.
Written from one sec’s own public pages, and accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. Apps change, and we have an obvious interest here, so check their site before deciding. If anything below is wrong or out of date we want to know and we will correct it.
The part that matters
The same literature has a second chapter.
The famous result is the one above: a short delay with an explicit dismiss option led users to abandon about one in three app opens. It is quoted everywhere, and rightly so.
The follow-up is quoted far less. A follow-up study across 1,039 real users over roughly thirteen weeks found the effect fades. People habituate, and push through more as the weeks pass. People habituate. The pause becomes a familiar piece of ceremony, performed on the way to the thing they were going to do anyway, and the abandonment rate falls with it.
This is not a criticism of one sec. It is a finding about how humans respond to any fixed friction, and it would apply equally to Skerrick if Skerrick used a fixed wait. It is, however, the specific reason Skerrick does two things differently.
Difference one: the interruption lands later
A pause at the door arrives before you have opened anything. You have no information yet about how long you intend to stay, and no evidence that this session is one of the bad ones, so the honest answer to “are you sure?” is always yes.
Three minutes in, the situation is completely different. You are past the part you enjoyed, and an interruption is no longer an obstacle between you and something you want. That is where Skerrick puts it.
Difference two: the wait grows
A fixed delay is a delay you learn. Skerrick’s wait starts at five seconds and climbs to twenty, forty-five and ninety across a single day, resetting at midnight. The intention is that the friction tracks how much you are pushing through rather than sitting at a constant that stops registering.
Whether that holds up over thirteen weeks is an honest open question. Skerrick has not shipped and has no data of its own, and anyone claiming otherwise about an unreleased app is making it up.
| Aspect | one sec | Skerrick |
|---|---|---|
| Where it interrupts | At the door. A pause between tapping the icon and the app opening. | Mid-scroll, three minutes after the app is already open. |
| The ask | Breathe, wait a moment, then decide whether to continue. | No decision offered. On Android the cut-off covers the app. On iPhone a notification says the ration is gone. |
| Scope | The app you are opening. | The whole app you pick, messages included. It cannot see which screen you are on. |
| If you push through | Continue after the pause. | Sixty more seconds, after a wait that grows with each push-through that day. |
| Evidence | A peer-reviewed field experiment on its own method. Rare in this category. | None of its own yet. Built on what that research and its follow-up found. |
| Free tier | There is one. Check their site for what it currently covers. | One feed of your choice, forever, with the full mechanic. |
The ladder
What escalating actually looks like
| Push-through | Wait | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 5s | Barely anything. That is the point. |
| 2nd | 20s | Long enough to notice you are waiting. |
| 3rd | 45s | Long enough to put the phone down. |
| 4th | 90s | Most people never get here. |
Waitlist
Skerrick has not shipped.
one sec is available now and has the evidence. If you want to know when this arrives, leave an email.