Something Else

A quit vaping app that counts nothing

Most apps for stopping vaping do roughly the same thing: you set a quit date, and from then on the app counts. Days clear, puffs avoided, money saved, a badge at each milestone.

Something Else does not count anything. This page explains what it does instead, so you can decide whether it is the kind of thing you want before you pay for it.

It starts with your own situations

The first thing the app does is a short assessment that maps the moments you vape in — the specific, recurring situations rather than a general sense of how much. For most people that is a list of eight to a dozen: the first coffee, the car, a work break, a stressful email, after dinner, in bed with the phone.

That list is the thing the programme works on. It is yours, and no two are quite the same.

One change each morning, for one moment

Each morning it gives you one small change for one of those moments, and nothing else for the rest of the day. The change is always an if-then plan, and it is always about the setting rather than about trying harder.

If the first coffee is when it happens, then the vape spends the night in a zipped bag by the front door, not on the counter. That kind of thing. Alongside it is one specific replacement — something to do when the urge arrives anyway, that you can do where you are and that has an end you can see.

The next morning it asks one question about it: did it work? Not “did you do it”. A change that did not hold is information about the change.

Eight weeks, then it stops

The programme runs for eight weeks and then ends. Nothing is served after day 56 and nothing renews. The ten-minute timer stays available for as long as you have the app.

Moments retire, and the number goes down

When a moment’s change has held twice and fourteen days have passed without a slip in it, that moment retires and leaves your list. The headline number counts down — eleven, then ten, then nine — rather than up.

Retired moments can come back, and often do. When one returns it just reappears on the list, with no alert and nothing implying you have lost something.

No streaks, no day counts, no badges

There is no streak to break, no count of clear days, and nothing that turns a difficult afternoon into a broken record. Logging a slip takes four taps — which moment, where, who with, what came just before — and nothing resets when you do.

This is a deliberate choice rather than a missing feature. A scoreboard makes the worst day of the month the day you stop opening the app, which is the day you most need it.

Ten minutes, for when an urge arrives

There is a ten-minute timer with a small task in it: either keeping your finger on a moving dot, or deciding whether a shape is the previous one turned or flipped. At the end it asks one question — still want to vape? — and records the answer either way.

It is one tap from anywhere in the app, and can be put on your iPhone’s Action Button or asked for by name.

What a morning actually looks like

You open it, and there is one moment named at the top — the one being worked on today — with the change underneath it and one replacement below that. There is a control to say you have made the change, and that is the whole screen.

The following morning it asks whether it worked, in one question, before showing you the next one. If you vaped in that moment, the app asks what got in the way and uses the answer to pick a different change for that moment next time round rather than repeating one that has already failed.

Most mornings take under a minute.

What it is not

It is not a coach, a group or a community — nobody else sees anything. It is not medical treatment, and it does not replace NHS stop-smoking support, which is free. It makes no claim about your health, and it does not tell you why you should stop. You already know; that is why you are reading this.

It has also not been trialled. The techniques it is built from have long research records, mostly in studies of other behaviours, but this particular arrangement has not been tested and we are not claiming a success rate. The evidence page is specific about that.

Practical details

It is an iPhone app. There is no Android version and no web version — the programme is delivered on the phone. It is UK only, and 18+.

Paid once. There is no subscription and nothing renews.

Try the assessment first

The assessment is free, takes a few minutes and does not need the app. At the end you get your own map of moments, which is useful on its own — plenty of people have taken it, written the list down, and gone away and moved a vape off a kitchen counter without buying anything.

Map the moments you vape

Something Else is £38.99 for the first hundred people who buy it, then £79.99. Paid once, no subscription. Bought here, there is a full refund within 14 days of buying. Bought through the App Store, Apple handles refunds and Apple’s process and timing apply.

More on what the research does and does not show: the evidence page.