Start with what iOS already gives you
Screen Time will block an app after a set number of minutes and ask for a passcode to keep going. Settings, Screen Time, App Limits. It takes two minutes and costs nothing.
Give it a fortnight before deciding it does not work. For a good number of people it is enough, and the ones for whom it is not will know exactly why by the end of the second week.
Pick the category, not the apps
The single most useful thing in Apple's picker is that you can select a whole category rather than individual apps. Social, say, or Games.
It matters for a reason nobody mentions: a category covers apps you have not installed yet. Block six apps by name and the seventh you download next month is not blocked, and you will download a seventh. Block the category and it is covered before it exists.
Individual apps are still right when the category is too broad. Blocking all of Social when your work happens in one of them is a rule you will be turning off by Wednesday.
- A category catches tomorrow's app as well as today's.
- Picking apps one at a time leaves a gap you will find without looking for it.
- Mix the two: the category for the bulk, individual picks for the exceptions.
Blocking is not hiding
Focus modes and removing an app from the Home Screen feel like blocking and are not. The app is still installed, still one search away, and Focus is one swipe from off.
It is worth doing anyway, because it removes the unthinking reach. Just do not count it as the thing that will hold at eleven at night.
When the passcode stops working
The failure is always the same. You know the passcode, so the block becomes a screen you tap through rather than a decision you make.
At that point the only remaining move is to put the decision outside your own head: somebody else sets the terms, and getting out early means asking them. That is a bigger step socially and a smaller one technically, and it is the only version that is still working in month three.
What none of this can do
Screen Time permission can be turned off in Settings by whoever is holding the phone, and no app can prevent that. Anything promising an unbreakable block is describing something iOS does not offer.
What a considered app does instead is notice. If its access disappears, or the phone stops checking in at all, the person holding your key is told. The block was never the hard part. Being seen is.
Common questions
Can I block one app but keep notifications?
Not through Screen Time limits. A blocked app is blocked, notifications included. If you need the notifications, the app is not the one to block.
Does blocking a category cover websites too?
Apple's picker covers web domains separately from apps. Select those as well or the browser becomes the way round.
Will blocking apps delete anything?
No. Nothing is removed and no data is touched. The apps are still installed and everything comes back exactly as it was.