Set a playtime limit for each game (for your kids, or for yourself)

Android's Digital Wellbeing can put a timer on an app, but it sees VipMod as one app, so a timer there covers every game at once, and it's easy to switch off. VipMod has a Playtime limit for each game inside it, and when the time is up it doesn't gray the game out. It closes it.

Pick an amount, then compare it with last week

1. Long-press the game's tile in VipMod, open Game tweaks and tap Playtime limit.
2. Choose Day, Week or Month at the top. For a day, tap one of the ready amounts, from 15 minutes up to 3 hours, or drag the slider in 5-minute steps up to 6 hours.
3. Tap Save. Nothing changes until you do, so you can try amounts freely, and the game doesn't need restarting.

Under the slider, a chart shows how long you actually played on each of the last 7 days, with your limit drawn across it as a dashed line that moves as you drag. It's the quickest way to see whether an hour a day is generous or tight before you commit to it. A week runs Monday to Sunday and a month is the calendar month. The limits also stack: with 30 minutes a day and 2 hours a week, playing the full half hour every day uses up the week on Thursday.

When the time runs out, the game shuts

• The game closes. It isn't dimmed or covered by a screen; it actually shuts, every copy of it, and a notification tells you when you can open it again.
• There's no warning a few minutes before, so before a long match, check the Playtime limit row in Game tweaks, which shows how much time is left.
• Most games save as you go, so what you can lose is the level or match you were in the middle of.
• Try to open the game before the period resets and VipMod shows No playtime left today with a countdown to when it reopens, instead of starting it. A new day begins at midnight by the phone's clock.

Only time on screen counts

• The clock runs while the game is on screen. Time it spends in the background while you use another app doesn't count, and neither does time in VipMod's own menus.
• All copies of a game share one allowance, clones included, so making a clone isn't a way around the limit.
• Games installed on your phone outside VipMod aren't covered at all.

For a child, add a real lock on top

The setting calls itself "not a lock", and that's accurate. VipMod has no parent password, so anyone who can open VipMod can change or remove a limit. Turning the phone's clock back doesn't give back time already used, but turning it forward does, because VipMod has no way to know the real time. So for a child, use VipMod's limits to decide how the time splits between games, and put a real lock above them: a parental control such as Google Family Link can cap or block VipMod as a whole, which covers every game inside it.

On yourself, it ends the session for you

If you leave an auto tap routine running, the routine ends at its own auto-stop time, but the game stays open on the screen. A daily limit closes the game itself, so the phone doesn't sit there warm all night. And for gacha games, a limit of 30 minutes a day is a fairly reliable way to stop at "just one more pull".