Writing
What we have worked out.
Guides to blocking apps on an iPhone, choosing the person who holds your key, and the limits every app in this category shares. No hours-saved figures, because no iPhone app can measure them.
Apps that let someone else control your screen time
A plain guide to the apps where another person, not you, decides when your blocked apps open. What each approach is good at, and where each one breaks.
How to block apps you cannot unblock yourself
Screen Time, Guided Access, deleting the app, and handing the key to someone else. What each one actually stops, and how long each one lasts.
What Apple's Screen Time API can and cannot do
A developer's account of the limits every iPhone app blocker shares: opaque app tokens, no usage numbers, a nearly fixed shield, and why none of it is a bug.
Who should hold your key
Choosing the person who decides when your apps open. Why the obvious choice is often wrong, and what to do when there is nobody suitable.
Why app blockers stop working after two weeks
The failure is predictable and it is not about willpower. What actually erodes, in the order it erodes, and the one change that survives it.
How to choose an accountability app
Six questions that separate the apps that keep working from the ones you uninstall in a month. Answer them before you pay for anything.
Giving your partner the Screen Time passcode: what actually happens
The most common DIY setup, and the four specific ways it comes apart. Worth reading before you decide it is enough.
Screen time agreements that a teenager will actually accept
Why parental controls turn into an arms race, and what changes when the teenager can ask and be answered instead of just being blocked.
How to block social media apps on iPhone
The three ways to do it, what each one costs you, and why picking a whole category beats picking apps one at a time.
Screen Time keeps turning off: what to check
Limits that vanish, a passcode that stops being asked for, and settings that reset overnight. The usual causes, in the order worth checking them.
What to say when someone asks you to unlock
You are holding somebody's key and a request has arrived. How to answer well, when to say no, and why saying no is the job.
How long should an unlock be?
Fifteen minutes, an hour, or the rest of the evening. What each length does to the arrangement, and why the number is smaller than you think.
How to stop scrolling at night
Why the evening is the hardest hour, what the usual advice gets wrong about it, and the two changes that survive past the first fortnight.
Block a category, not a list of apps
Picking apps by name leaves a gap that fills itself within a month. What a category selection covers, and when it is the wrong choice.
A screen time agreement for couples, and how to use it
A copy-and-paste agreement written for two adults rather than a parent and a child, plus the four clauses most people forget until they need them.
When your partner is always on their phone
How to raise it without starting the same fight, what to ask for instead of less phone, and when the problem is not really the phone.
How to build a phone-free morning that holds
Most attempts fail for the same two reasons, and neither is discipline. What to change the night before so the morning takes care of itself.
How to actually use TikTok less
Why the usual advice fails against an endless feed, which of the built-in tools are worth turning on, and the one change that survives a bad evening.
Instagram's own time limit, versus blocking it
The built-in daily limit exists and almost everybody taps past it. Why that happens, and what changes when the limit is not yours to dismiss.
Why streaks work, and when they turn on you
A streak is the cheapest motivation available and the easiest to break badly. What makes one useful, and the failure mode nobody designs for.
Phone boundaries at work that are actually reasonable
Personal phone use at work is universal and mostly unmanaged. Where the real line is, and how to hold it without performing productivity.
Working from home removed the thing keeping your phone in check
Office phone habits were held in place by being visible to other people. At home that is gone, and the usual advice does not replace it.
Setting up a phone pact with your best friend
Why a friend often works better than a partner or a flatmate, how to set the terms, and the two ways these arrangements usually go quiet.
A phone pact with your flatmates
Shared spaces make late-night scrolling contagious. How to agree a rule that survives contact with a Tuesday, without turning into a house politics issue.
Phone addiction or phone habit? The difference matters
The word people reach for is usually the wrong one, and the two problems need different answers. How to tell which one you have.
Does a social media detox actually work?
Short breaks feel excellent and mostly do not stick. What a detox is genuinely good for, and what to do with it so the effect outlasts the week.
The loop between your phone and feeling anxious
Reaching for the phone when you feel bad is not irrational, it is effective for about ninety seconds. Why the loop closes, and where it can be opened.
Screens before bed: what is actually going on
Blue light gets the blame and is probably the least of it. The two mechanisms that matter more, and what that means for what you change.
iPhone Focus modes versus app blockers
Focus filters what reaches you. A blocker stops you reaching. They solve different halves of the problem and most people only set up one.
Studying without your phone in the room
Why the second hour is where it breaks, what students say actually works, and the honest limits of any of it during exams.
Phone habits in a long distance relationship
The usual advice about putting the phone down assumes you are in the same room. When the phone is the relationship, the rules have to be different.
The phone stacking game, and what to do after the bill
Stack the phones, first to reach for one pays. It works well for two hours and teaches nothing. Why that is fine, and what it is actually good for.
A seven day phone challenge for two people
A week is short enough to finish and long enough to learn something. The day by day shape, where it breaks, and what to keep afterwards.