For therapists and counselors

Last updated September 14, 2026.

This page describes what Bramble does between sessions, what it deliberately does not do, which clinical work it rests on, and exactly what a client’s Circle can and cannot see. It is written to be checked rather than believed, and it should take about five minutes.

1. What it is

A free iPhone app and a free Chrome extension, for men working on compulsive pornography use. Three parts:

• Protections. Four layers running on the device — a DNS proxy, a URL content filter, an app shield, and an on-device image classifier. They hold across every app rather than the browser alone, which matters because most of what a client reaches for is not in Safari.
• A Circle. People he chooses, who can see that his protections are holding. Section 4 is precise about what that does and does not include.
• A daily check-in. One question, at an hour he sets.

There is no day counter anywhere in the product. Section 3 says why.

2. What it is not

It is not treatment, and it is not a substitute for the work you do.

Bramble does not assess, diagnose, or stage anything. It produces no score, no severity rating, and no clinical output that could reasonably go in a file. Nothing in it is built to be read as a measure of how a client is doing, and we would rather it were not used that way.

The accurate description is narrower and more useful: friction on the device, a person who knows, and a daily beat. It covers some of the hours you are not in the room. That is the whole claim.

3. What it rests on

Named so you can check it rather than take a founder’s word for it.

• Patrick Carnes. The coping-pattern framing used throughout — preoccupation, ritual, behavior, despair, and the despair feeding back into the beginning. Out of the Shadows.
• The three circles, from Sex Addicts Anonymous, as a worksheet at the three circles. It stays in the browser; nothing is submitted.
• Marlatt and Gordon’s abstinence violation effect. This is why there is no streak counter. A number a man can lose turns an ordinary hard night into a collapse, and the collapse does more damage than the night did. Building the product around a figure he can reset would have meant building the trap in.
• Carnes’ ten criteria, in plain words, at the ten questions — deliberately without the word addict and without a label at the end.

Where the literature is contested, the site says so rather than picking the more useful side. The ICD-11 recognizes compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as an impulse-control disorder; the DSM-5 declined to include hypersexual disorder. We do not resolve that in either direction, and the articles hedge it every time it comes up. How the writing is sourced and corrected is set out at editorial standards.

4. What the Circle can see

This is the section most worth reading closely, because it is where Bramble differs from the accountability software a client may already have tried and abandoned.

Nearly all of it happens on the phone. Browsing history does not leave the device.

A Circle member sees that protections are on and holding. He does not see URLs, page titles, screenshots, or a list of what was caught. There is no screenshot capture in the product at all.

5. What you can hand someone today

All free, no signup, nothing tracked, and none of it requires installing the app.

• The guide — the whole of it in one sitting, about twenty minutes, and it prints.
• The ten questions — Carnes’ criteria in plain words.
• The two-minute reflection — six questions, no score, nothing leaves the page.
• The three circles — the worksheet, stored in his own browser.
• The library — sixteen books on five shelves, linked to publishers, no affiliate codes.

If you would rather point at something specific than at a homepage, two sections of the guide carry the most weight on their own: If you have prayed about this and nothing changed, and What to do in the hard moment.

6. Where it stops

Every article on this site ends by naming the point at which it is no longer an article’s job — returning despite consequences a man genuinely cares about, trauma underneath it, or a marriage being damaged — and each one points at a CSAT and the IITAP directory by name rather than back at the app.

That is deliberate, and it is not a courtesy. The failure mode for a free tool in this category is retaining a man it cannot help, and the men it cannot help are the ones who most need you.

7. What it costs, and what we are not asking of you

Bramble is free. There is no paid tier, no upgrade, and nothing to sell. The comparison article carries no affiliate links, and the recovery library links to publishers rather than to a storefront.

There is also no partner program, no referral code, and no tracking link for you. If you send someone here we will not know, and that is the intended design rather than an omission. Nothing on this page is asking you to endorse anything.

8. Who built it

Luke, who struggled with pornography from the age of ten until thirty-eight and did the work of getting free — groups, the clinical model, and a week in an intensive alongside other men. He is not a clinician, and the site says so wherever the distinction could matter. His account is at about.

Bramble is Christ-centered and clinically informed, in that order, and it does not hide either half. A client who wants nothing to do with the faith material can use the protections and the Circle without encountering it.

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If something here is wrong, overstated, or would be unsafe to put in front of a client, that is worth more to us than a polite reply: hello@getbramble.app.