There is a quiet irony in building a learning app: the more engaging it is, the more carefully it has to handle a student's time. A Grade 10 student revising for exams does not need an app that keeps them tapping at eleven at night. Good study has a beginning and an end. Digital Sunset is the feature that gives the day a proper ending.
A daily limit that lives on the device
Each student, with their parents, can set a daily screen-time limit for the app. That limit is enforced on the device itself, not on a distant server, so it works even when the connection is patchy — which, across many schools in Nepal, is the normal condition rather than the exception. The app keeps its own count of time spent and respects the limit locally.
Wind-down, not a hard cut-off
Stopping abruptly mid-thought is its own kind of stress. As a student approaches their limit, the app shifts into a wind-down: it signals that the day is closing, encourages finishing the current question rather than starting a new chapter, and gently lowers the brightness of the interface. The idea is borrowed from a real sunset — the light fades, it does not switch off.
What the wind-down does
- Warns ahead of time so a student can finish the problem they are on
- Suggests a small recap instead of opening fresh material
- Dims the screen gradually to cue the body that the session is ending
- Closes the day with a short summary of what was studied
Honest about what a limit can and cannot do
We are careful not to oversell this. A screen-time limit inside one app does not solve a child's overall relationship with their phone, and it is not meant to. Digital Sunset only governs time spent in pdp shikshya. What it can do is make sure that the learning we are responsible for does not become the thing keeping a student up — and that a healthy default is the easy one to keep.
A conversation, not a lock
We see the limit less as a lock and more as a starting point for a conversation between a student and their family about when study fits best in the day. Some students study early in the morning; others after dinner. The number is theirs to set. Our job is to honour it gracefully — and to make stopping feel like a natural close rather than a punishment.