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How to block an app until you've exercised on iPhone
Screen Time can't see a workout and a Shortcut can't keep an app shut. What works on iPhone, and how to set up a block that opens when the run lands.
The question comes up the same way every time: I want Instagram shut until I've worked out, on my iPhone. How?
Here's the honest answer, including the parts the phone can do on its own.
What the iPhone can do by itself
Screen Time can limit an app. You set a daily limit or a schedule, and when the time's up the app greys out. Two problems. The limit ends at a time, not at a workout: Screen Time only knows how long the app has been open, nothing about whether you've moved. And the limit can be ignored with a tap. Ignore Limit is right there on the screen, and the passcode that guards it is yours.
A Shortcuts automation can react to a workout ending. It can send a message, open an app, turn on a Focus. What it can't do is keep an app shut in the meantime. Shortcuts runs when something happens; it doesn't hold a door.
So on its own, the iPhone can tell you about a workout, or limit an app on a clock, but it can't tie one to the other.
A block that waits for the workout
That's the gap Blocky fills. You pick the habit, you pick the apps, and the apps stay blocked until the habit is done. For exercise, done means the workout reached Apple Health.
Not yet.
Nothing to log. Your watch records the workout, or Strava does, and it lands in Apple Health the way it already does. The moment it's there, the apps open on their own. You don't open Blocky and you don't type a thing.
The block runs on your phone, not on our servers, so it holds with no signal at all. Open a blocked app and the block says what's left: "Instagram unblocks after a workout. 18 minutes to go."
Setting it up
- Get Blocky from the App Store. The first seven days are free.
- Pick the exercise habit and set the goal. Thirty minutes a day, counted from workout minutes, is a fair place to start.
- Choose the apps to block.
- Go move. Record the workout the way you already do. When it lands in Apple Health, the apps open.
If the goal is long, add a milestone. A milestone is a smaller goal on the way, and it unblocks some of your apps early. Messages at the halfway mark, the rest at the goal. You pick the order.
When you must have the app
Some days you need the app before the workout. A gem opens it for 15 minutes. You earn a gem with a sweep, a day you did every habit you'd scheduled. Spending one shows in your history, and if you let your friends see it, they can tease you about it.
Doing the habit always unblocks the app for free. Getting past a block with a gem never breaks a streak. Falling short does.
Days you don't train
Set the habit for weekdays only, or pause it while a knee heals. Rest days and paused days are skipped, so your streak keeps going. Only falling short ends it, and if you do miss a day, Blocky offers to put it back with a streak cover the next time you open it.
Seven days free, on iPhone.
The Blocky team