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ReelCount walks you through this the first time you open it. If you skipped it, or it got switched off:

1. Open ReelCount and tap Turn on counting. Android opens its Accessibility settings.
2. Find ReelCount in the list. On most phones it’s under Installed apps or Downloaded apps, which is where people get stuck.
3. Tap it, turn the switch on, and confirm.

Then open one of the apps it counts and scroll. Rotly appears at the top of the screen and starts counting.

If the switch is greyed out and you installed ReelCount from somewhere other than Google Play, Android is treating it as a restricted setting. Open ReelCount’s App info, tap the menu in the corner, choose Allow restricted settings, then try again.

It’s the only way Android lets one app notice that a new short video has appeared inside another. ReelCount is told about a fixed list of short-video apps and nothing else on your phone.

It reads just enough on-screen text to tell one clip from the next, and turns it straight into a one-way fingerprint. It never reads your messages or passwords, never takes screenshots and never sends anything off your phone. The privacy policy has every detail.

Today: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels.

Learning now: Snapchat Spotlight, TikTok, Moj, Josh, Snack Video and Kwai. ReelCount already watches these, but counts may be off until each one is confirmed on a real feed. When one is, it moves up to the first list, in the app and here.

Reels watched in a web browser aren’t counted.

Not at the moment. iOS doesn’t let one app see what’s on screen in another, which a live count depends on. ReelCount is Android only.

Twenty: English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. It follows your phone’s language unless you pick one in Settings, under Language.

Many phones pause apps in the background to save battery, and ReelCount gets caught by it. The app notices and shows Counting has stopped on its home screen, with a button to the right setting. If you’d rather do it by hand, here are the steps for your phone:

Menu names vary a little between versions of each phone’s software. If yours look different, search your Settings for “battery” and “ReelCount”.

If ReelCount is force-stopped, whether by you in App info or by a “cleaner” or task-killer app, Android withdraws its Accessibility permission completely, and it won’t come back on its own. The app notices and takes you back through setup.

Turn it back on as in How do I turn on counting?, and if you use a cleaner app, tell it to leave ReelCount alone.

It’s close, and when it’s unsure it leaves a reel out rather than inventing one. An undercount is disappointing; an overcount would be a lie.

• A reel is counted once it has settled on screen, so flicking straight past one doesn’t count.
• Scrolling back to a reel you’ve just watched doesn’t count it again, even if your phone restarted ReelCount in between.
• Now and then a clip is missed, when there’s nothing on screen ReelCount can use to tell it apart from the one before.

Counting depends on how each app lays out its player. When an app changes that, counting in it can stop until we release a fix, and the app tells you rather than showing a number that has quietly stopped moving.

Press and drag it up or down the screen. It stays where you put it while you scroll. It only appears while you’re watching reels or shorts in one of the apps ReelCount counts, and it’s hidden when the block screen is showing.

Counting only runs while one of those apps is open, and stops completely when your screen goes off. While you’re actually scrolling it uses about a tenth of one processor core. Instagram uses around twenty-five times that just to play the video. That was measured on a Samsung Galaxy M51.

Open the Limits tab and use the minus and plus buttons, or tap 50, 100, 150 or 200. The new limit applies from today. Days that have already happened keep the limit they had, so changing it never rewrites your streak.

With Block reels at my limit on, ReelCount covers the reel player once you reach your limit, for the rest of the day. The rest of the app keeps working, so you can still message people, post and search.

Close reels takes you back out of the player. Give me 5 more minutes lets you carry on for five minutes before the cover comes back.

Strict mode removes the five-minute button, so there’s no talking yourself past the limit. Turn blocking on first. Honestly, nothing on a phone is a real lock: you can always switch ReelCount off. Strict mode just makes that a deliberate choice rather than a tap.

By how much of your daily limit you’ve used:

• Fresh under a quarter of your limit.
• Fading up to three quarters.
• Rotting up to one and a half times your limit.
• Gone beyond that.

With a limit of 100 that’s fresh under 25, fading from 25, rotting from 75 and gone from 150. Every day he starts fresh again.

Each day you stay at or under your limit adds one to your streak, and today counts as soon as it starts, for as long as you stay under. Going over resets it to zero.

A day only counts if ReelCount was running. A day when counting was switched off breaks the streak rather than being quietly credited as perfect, because a streak you can’t trust isn’t worth keeping.

Rotly earns sunglasses at a 3 day streak, a crown at 7, a holiday kit at 14 and a golden glow at 30. They belong to your current streak, so if it breaks they go back in the box until you earn them again. He only wears them while he’s fresh.

No. This version of ReelCount doesn’t even ask Android for internet access. Your counts stay on your phone. The only copies are any your phone makes itself, in its backup to your Google account. More in the privacy policy.

In the app, open Settings and choose Delete all history, or Clear today’s count for just today. Uninstalling removes everything. Step-by-step instructions are here.

Only someone holding your unlocked phone, or anyone who can see your home screen if you’ve added the widget. ReelCount has no way to send your count to anyone, friends included.

Not in this version. Comparing counts needs a connection between phones, and ReelCount deliberately has no internet access, so it has no way to send your count to anyone. If that ever changes, the privacy policy will say exactly what’s shared before it happens, and nothing will be shared unless you choose it.