The Craving Shield

What is the Craving Shield?

A guided session for the minutes when a craving is strongest. It shows your reason, paces your breathing through a roughly three-minute urge-surfing timer, offers a short coaching line, and asks at the end whether the urge passed.

Those answers feed Insights, so over time you can see your resist rate and the times that are hardest for you.

How do I open it quickly?

From wherever you are:

1. Today screen — tap the Craving Shield button, or the Shield tile.
2. Home Screen or Lock Screen — add the Craving Shield widget for one tap.
3. Apple Watch — open Vow and start Ride the wave.

How do I use it during a craving?

Stay with it until the timer ends — the point is to outlast the wave, not to fight it.

1. Read your why. It is the first thing on screen for a reason.
2. Pick a style — Ride the wave, Letting go or Box breathing — and follow the breath.
3. Notice the craving without acting on it: where you feel it, how strong it is, how it changes.
4. When the timer ends, tap "The urge passed", or log honestly that it did not. Both are useful.

Why does urge surfing work?

Cravings behave like waves: they build, peak and fall away. Urge surfing — developed by G. Alan Marlatt and colleagues at the University of Washington and used in Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention — teaches you to observe that wave instead of obeying or wrestling it.

Read more in our answer on what urge surfing is.

Where does the coaching line come from?

It is written by an AI model (from OpenAI) through Vow's own server. The request contains only your habit type, the trigger you tapped, your number of clean days and the app's language. It never includes your name, your reason, photos, voice notes or anything you have typed.

If the service is slow or unavailable, Vow shows a written line instead, so the Shield always works.

Is the Craving Shield free?

The Craving Shield is part of Vow Premium. The breathing exercise on the Today screen and the crisis resources are free for everyone.