Google made Android 17’s best feature a Pixel 11-exclusive. This free app does it better

Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.

Google’s latest Pixel 11 series has been making waves since its announcement earlier this month. If you weren’t so savvy about the (stealthy) upgrades — or the new colors — that it brings, you’d probably pass the phones off as the old Pixel 10 series. But if you do make the effort to inquire about the improvements the Pixel 11 brings, you’ll find a few good, handy additions. A few of these include better control over the camera’s tones , the new, enticing Tap-to-Share , real-time translations for podcasts and videos, and more.

One of my favorite inclusions is Android 17’s new Digital Wellbeing feature, called Pause Point . When enabled, it forces you to deliberate whether you truly want to open a possibly distracting app. While it was announced as a core Android 17 feature, Google screwed up big time by limiting it to the Pixel 11 series .

But thanks to the beauty of Android, I discovered an app called “ Stroll ,” which serves a similar purpose by preventing me from using social media or other time-sinks . Unlike Pause Point, which relies heavily on one’s power of introspection, this app puts a simple, somewhat fun spin on accessing those apps: earning your time by walking. And after a few weeks of using it, I can already tell you it’s working pretty well.

Scrolling mindlessly on social media is something we spend more time doing than we’d like to admit. And that attaches a sense of shame and guilt to it. Stroll takes a different route, making you pause and contemplate rather than shaming you for poor life choices. This way, you can feel okay about using social media apps or other apps where you might spend time disproportionately.

The idea is simple: you earn time for using distracting apps in exchange for the steps you’ve walked. The more steps you’ve walked, the more time you accumulate, which you can use later if you have any left. That way, you do the hard work first and reap its reward in the form of time twiddling on TikTok.

It’s like that Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried-starring sci-fi, In Time , where time is the literal currency. Except here, it’s not a matter of life and death, but simply the time you can spend on social media, fair and square.

The app sources information about your steps not only from the phone’s built-in step counter, but also from a connected smartwatch (so long as its app supports Health Connect ). You can also use Google Health to manually enter steps, and they sync to Stroll, so all the effort of walking without the phone in your grip doesn’t go to waste.