Screen Time limits, on their own
iOS will block an app after a set number of minutes and ask for a passcode to continue. It is free, it is already on your phone, and it is the right place to start.
It stops working the moment you know your own passcode, which is immediately. The block becomes a four second speed bump you stop noticing within a week.
- Stops
- the first, unthinking reach
- Does not stop
- a decision to keep going
- Lasts
- about a week
Giving the Screen Time passcode to someone else
The oldest version of this idea, and it genuinely works better than nothing. Your partner sets the passcode and does not tell you.
It falls over on the details. They have to be physically present, or on the phone, every time. There is no record of how often you asked. And the recovery flow exists: a Screen Time passcode can be reset through your Apple Account, which you control.
- Stops
- casual overrides
- Does not stop
- account recovery
- Costs them
- being interrupted
Deleting the app
Effective for a day. Reinstalling takes fifteen seconds and your account is still there, which is why nobody who has tried this is still doing it.
Guided Access and Focus modes
Guided Access locks you into one app rather than out of one, which is a different job. It is excellent for handing your phone to a child and useless for this.
Focus modes hide apps and silence notifications. Hiding is not blocking. The app is still there, still one search away, and Focus is one swipe from off.
Handing the key to another person
The version that survives contact with a real evening: the apps are blocked on a schedule, and the only way out early is to ask somebody, and they can say no.
This changes the shape of the moment. You are no longer deciding whether to break a rule you set. You are deciding whether to send a message to somebody who will read it. Most people put the phone down instead, and that is the whole mechanism. It is not clever, but it is the only part of this that keeps working in month three.
- The block is not a passcode, so there is nothing for you to remember or reset.
- No answer means it stays shut. Silence is a safe outcome, not a loophole.
- Asking is a message, not a negotiation, and it can be turned down.
The honest limits
Any of this can be undone eventually. Screen Time permission can be revoked in iOS Settings. An app can be deleted. A phone can be reset.
What a well built one does is refuse to hide that. Warden notices when its access is taken away and tells your Keyholder. It notices when the phone stops checking in at all. It never pretends the door is welded shut, because it is not, and an app that claimed otherwise would be lying to you about the only thing that matters.
Common questions
Can I block apps without anyone else being involved?
Yes, with Screen Time, and it works for a while. If you are reading this you have probably already found where it stops. The point at which self-managed blocking fails is the point at which a second person starts being worth the awkwardness.
Is there a way to block apps permanently?
No. Apple does not allow it and you should not want it. Every serious blocker keeps a way out; the useful question is what that way out costs you.
What happens if I lose my phone or my Keyholder disappears?
In Warden, blocking carries on for a couple of days so losing a Keyholder is not a way out, and then clears itself. Nobody gets stranded with a locked phone and nobody to ask.