With so much connectivity everywhere it’s important to remember to have time disconnected; time spent with family and friends is important, and so is work, and constant mobile use hinders these things.

While there are plenty of ways to balance your digital lives, there’s not many universal solutions. What works on Apple’s iOS doesn’t necessarily work on Android, and neither usually works across desktop services.

Enter Optus Pause, which gives Optus customers the ability to pause their mobile and home services to put a hold on notifications and connectivity distractions.

It works differently to most digital wellbeing solutions; instead of turning things off on your local device, you can disable the connectivity to your device or your home, which stops notifications and other interruptions from coming through. It’s a bit of a drastic step, but very functional.

Clive Dickens, Vice President at Optus said of Optus Pause:

“As a technology company, we know the positive role that connectivity plays in the everyday lives of Australians, but we also understand that sometimes our love of staying connected 24/7 can create distractions for ourselves, our families, our friends, our work colleagues.”

“Optus Pause empowers our customers to balance their connected time so a face to face business meeting can be social-media-update-free or family dinner time can be about the conversation not missed snaps, or sleep time can be absent ‘pings’.”

The Pause service is managed through the My Optus app, and you can select any compatible services linked to your account. You can set a timer and the devices you want to pause, and if you want / need to unpause a service, it’s just one click and you’re back.

For more information, you can head to the Optus Pause website. The rollout is underway and it isn’t yet available for every service.