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    'Quit smoking' apps are 3x more likely to help ditch cigarettes than will power alone. For every 1,000 people trying to quit, using an app resulted in roughly 40 more successful quitters than receiving basic advice or no help at all.
    Science

    ‘Quit smoking’ apps are 3x more likely to help ditch cigarettes than will power alone. For every 1,000 people trying to quit, using an app resulted in roughly 40 more successful quitters than receiving basic advice or no help at all.


    ‘Quit smoking’ apps are 3x more likely to help ditch cigarettes than will power alone. For every 1,000 people trying to quit, using an app resulted in roughly 40 more successful quitters than receiving basic advice or no help at all.

    https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/quit-smoking-cessation-mobile-apps-study/

    View 13 Comments

    13 Comments

    1. Jumpinghoops46 on

      >There are many approaches you can take to stop smoking, from nicotine replacement therapy to behavioral support to good ol’ quitting cold turkey. None of these are easy, but it turns out that using a mobile smoking cessation app can greatly increase your chances of breaking the habit.

      >That’s from a meta-analysis of 31 different trials involving over 12,000 participants, which looked at studies comparing intervention strategies for discontinuing smoking. The idea, described in a paper published in the [journal](https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2026/01/09/bmjebm-2025-113971) BMJ Evidence Based Medicine, was to better understand the effectiveness of these mobile apps in the process of quitting, particularly since they can easily reach a large number of people and don’t cost a lot.

      >There are dozens of studies on this, but the team of medical researchers believed that prior systematic reviews yielded inconclusive results, owing to small sample size and the apps becoming obsolete.

      >The 31 trials selected by the researchers were published between 2018 and 2025, and mostly featured participants from high-income economies like the US, Germany, Spain, and Japan. Twelve of these compared the use of mobile apps versus no or minimal smoking cessation (SC) support, 14 of them compared apps plus traditional interventions versus traditional interventions alone, and five of them looked at Psychological-behavioral theory (PBT)-based apps versus traditional behavioral apps.

    2. WetFart-Machine on

      This helped me tremendously. The apps would have achievements and allow you to track your progress and even some had chats so you could talk to other quitters

    3. B3llona_ on

      Didn’t know there were apps for this! I’ll have to start recommending to my patients. Any US based apps used in this study?

    4. calvinwho on

      I didn’t have any good ones of these when I quit, but the thing I noticed was how hard the habits were top break. I associated so many of my daily task with smoking it took a fair amount of deprogramming of the habits before I could work on the chemical addiction part. I can definitely see how an app could help redirect some of those associations, but they’re addicting in their own right.

    5. Electrical_Top656 on

      Former smoker here

      Even quitting for a day is better than continuing the habit

      You can do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    6. SonnyvonShark on

      I love this! Glad to see apps are working for the people. Anecdotally, quitting cold turkey helped me, and 2 years free! People don’t realize how much of a burden smoking is, so I hope more apps like these! Such good news! Not everyone is like me, and so I am so darn happy this helps people!

    7. EastvsWest on

      Gamifying a task makes it more likely to stick with it… For better or worse. In this case, it sounds like a win.

    9. spacebarstool on

      If an additional 40 out of 1,000 is a 3x increase in successfully quitting, then the overall success rate is very low?

    10. PixlShiftr on

      BecomeanEx by the Truth foundation is another good choice for quitting smoking and vaping.

    11. UmbraofDeath on

      Intuitively this makes sense since addiction has to do with the reward processes in the brain so it’s logical that something else attempting to highjack it would be more effective than something that didn’t. But the numbers reported here aren’t very high? Granted the results aren’t as conclusive given over 30% of participants dropped out. Whole that’s a sizable amount of participants, it’s nice to see ~19% of people getting better with apps and medications.

    12. openallthewindows on

      Not specifically for smoking but I highly recommend Finch. The free version is more than enough. Helping me keep the good habits and I successfully quit nicotine, alcohol, and weed. Really keeps me motivated and to stay on track

    13. stonedsand-_- on

      The thing that helped me was the app giving me how much I spent and the total number of cigarettes I smoked. The totals were what did it for me I didn’t want to see that number go from 12,765 to 12,766