Offduty
Hold your Gmail. Deliver it in batches on your schedule.
For a long time I told myself I was good at ignoring email. Notifications off, focus modes, tab closed. But I still managed to checked. Not because anything urgent had arrived, because it was one flick away. That possibility was enough to pull me out of whatever I was doing.
I went looking for a tool that would simply hold my Gmail and release it at times I chose. Everything I found was either a full email client replacement, an AI sorting layer, buried under 10 other features or an extension that hid the unread count. None of them actually stopped the email from arriving.
So I built Offduty.
It connects to Gmail via the official Google API and holds incoming email in the background, delivering it in scheduled batches. You pick the times, twice a day by default or your own custom schedule. VIP senders bypass the hold so nothing genuinely urgent gets missed. You can lift the hold manually any time and it resumes automatically.
No new email client, it works wherever you do. No AI reading your mail. Just Gmail, delivered when you choose.
I've completed Google's CASA Tier 2 security assessment.
Happy to answer questions about it.
6 Comments
This is an interesting take because the problem isn’t email itself, it’s the checking loop.
My main question is around trust + behavior change email is something people instinctively open multiple times a day, so even if the tool holds messages, what’s the main trigger that makes users actually stick to the schedule instead of bypassing it over time?
I feel like tools like this live or die on whether they can change that “just one quick check” habit, not just control delivery.
For me, what changed the habit of checking the inbox quickly was that I never had any notifications from new emails and when I looked in my inbox, any new emails were not there. The habit changed to only looking at my emails at the scheduled time because that is when my brain knew to expect them.
Just like any tool, it can be bypassed if you really want to, it's on the user to commit.
The benefit with this is that it's never in the inbox. So the impulse has been removed.
I like that you solved the temptation instead of adding another layer to manage email. "Don't let it arrive until I'm ready" is a much simpler mental model than inbox zero or AI prioritization. The product feels opinionated in a good way.
Thank you. Inbox zero can be deceptive because some emails need to stay in the inbox temporarily or you're constantly being distracted trying to reply and archive. I prefer to protect my time and pause the inbox.
That's exactly what I was curious about.
Reading your reply, I think there's one strategic business decision sitting underneath that philosophy which becomes much more significant as the product grows, but I don't think I can do the reasoning behind it justice in a thread.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful. What's the best email to reach you?
Notification tax is real. Most solutions hide the symptom (unread badge). You're removing the stimulus itself.
Question: VIP sender bypass. How do users manage that list without creating decision friction?