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Why Screen Time limits never stick (and what does)
A Screen Time limit ends at a time, and a tap ignores it. Why a block tied to a clock gives way, and why one tied to a deed holds.
A Screen Time limit has a short life. It lands, the app closes, and a few days later the limit is still set and the app is open anyway. That's not a willpower problem. It's how the limit is built.
What Apple's design does
Screen Time limits an app by time. It counts the minutes the app has been open, and when they're spent it puts up a screen. Three things are true about that screen.
A tap ignores it. The screen offers Ignore Limit: fifteen more minutes, or the rest of the day. One tap and the limit is gone until tomorrow.
The passcode is yours. A Screen Time passcode helps for a moment, but you set it, you know it, and you're the one who types it in. A lock you hold the key to is a drawer.
It ends at a time, not at a deed. A daily limit resets at midnight. A schedule ends at nine. Nothing you do changes when the app comes back. You wait, and it comes back on its own.
Screen Time only knows screen time. It can't see a workout, a glass of water, a night's sleep or a fast, so it can't make an app wait for any of them.
A clock gives way. A deed holds.
A block tied to a clock asks you to wait, and a tap is faster than waiting. The tap costs nothing, and nothing is on the other side of the wait. So the tap wins, and the limit stops meaning anything.
A block tied to a deed asks you to do the thing. The app stays shut until the thing is done, and doing it is the only free way through. That turns the pull of the phone around. The same pull that kept the couch comfortable is now the reason to get out the door, because that's how the app opens.
Tapping is not cardio.
There's a second difference. A limit measures the phone. A deed measures the day. How long the app has been open doesn't matter; the only question is whether the run landed, the glass got logged, the night's sleep reached Apple Health.
How Blocky does it
Pick the habit you keep skipping. Pick the apps you open instead. From then on the apps are blocked until the habit's done, and Apple Health is what says it's done. The run lands from Strava or your watch, the sleep from whatever tracks it, and the apps open on their own. Water and check-ins you log yourself: in the app, on a widget or by telling Siri.
The block runs on your phone, not on our servers, and it holds with no signal at all.
There is a way past it, and it costs something. A gem opens a blocked app for 15 minutes. You earn one with a sweep, a day you did every habit you'd scheduled. Spending it shows in your history, and your friends can see it if you let them. Doing the habit always unblocks the app for free, and getting past a block never breaks a streak. Falling short does.
Want a plain block with nothing to earn? Take a break: pick the apps, tap once, and they're blocked until the break ends, five minutes or all weekend. A strict break has no End button. It ends when time's up, or with a gem.
That's the whole difference. A limit asks how long. A block asks whether. Only one of those has an answer you can't tap away.
Seven days free, on iPhone.
The Blocky team