BlockMyself
Shrink the window

Change when and where, not just what.

Everything else on this site controls what the device can reach. This page is about controlling when it is available and where it is, which is a different lever and often an easier one. A filter asks you to win a fight you are already in. A smaller window means the fight starts less often.

Time Place What is even installed

Why this is worth doing before more filtering

Ask yourself when it actually happens. Almost nobody answers "randomly, throughout the day." The honest answer is usually a narrow and predictable window: late at night, alone, in bed, tired, after everyone else is asleep. Sometimes it is a specific other time — a commute, an empty house on a particular afternoon — but it is rarely spread evenly.

If that is true, then a filter is doing its work at the hardest possible moment: after you are already looking, already tired, and already negotiating. Changing when and where the device is available moves the decision to a calmer hour, which is a much better place to make it.

This is not a replacement for the rest of the site. It is the layer people skip because it feels less technical, and it is frequently the one that makes the difference. If you only have energy for one change this week, a scheduled cut-off and a charger in another room will usually beat another filtering layer.

Time: close the hours you already know about

Pick the window from the question above. Be generous with it: start it earlier than you think you need, because the pull usually begins before the moment you would name.

On the phone
  1. On iPhone, use Screen Time -> Downtime, scheduled across your window. During Downtime only the apps you explicitly allow will open.
  2. Set Always Allowed deliberately: phone calls and messages if you need to be reachable, and nothing else. This list is where good intentions quietly leak, so keep it short.
  3. Add App Limits for the specific apps that are the real problem, rather than for categories. A one-minute limit on a named app effectively closes it.
  4. On Android, use Digital Wellbeing -> Bedtime mode and app timers for the same effect.
On Apple devices, none of this holds without a Screen Time passcode someone else holds. Without one, Downtime is a suggestion with an "Ignore Limit" button. That single setting is the difference between a schedule and a reminder.
On the network

A schedule on the router is harder to argue with than one on the device, because changing it means getting up, finding the admin password, and thinking about what you are doing.

  1. Most routers can pause internet access for specific devices on a schedule. Set one across your window.
  2. Better, if your router supports it: schedule the whole guest or main network off, rather than per device, so a second device does not quietly become the workaround.
  3. Have the trusted person hold the router admin password, or this is a two-minute change.
  4. Remember what this does not cover: mobile data. A phone on cellular ignores your router entirely, so pair a network schedule with Downtime on the phone.

Place: the oldest trick, and still the best value

No configuration, nothing to bypass, and it removes the specific situation rather than filtering it. If you do one thing on this page, do this one.

  1. Charge the phone outside the bedroom. Buy a cheap alarm clock so "I need it for the alarm" stops being the reason. This is the single highest-value change on the page and it takes one evening to start.
  2. Decide where the laptop lives, and make it somewhere visible. A laptop that stays in a shared room is a different object from one that comes to bed.
  3. Do not take the phone into the bathroom. Unglamorous, and for a lot of people it closes a specific recurring window.
  4. Notice which room and which chair. If there is a spot where it reliably happens, change something physical about that spot rather than trying to be stronger in it.
These feel too simple to matter, which is exactly why they get skipped in favour of another configuration change. They work because they operate before the urge rather than during it, and because there is nothing to circumvent — you cannot bypass a phone that is in the kitchen.

Reduce what is there at all

Filtering an app is harder than not having it. Ask honestly, app by app, whether you need it on this device, and be suspicious of the answer if it arrives too quickly.

Delete rather than filter

If one app is where this actually happens, removing it is more reliable than every technical control on this site combined. You can usually still reach the service in a filtered browser when you genuinely need it, which is the point: the friction lands on the impulse rather than on the legitimate use.

Cut down the browsers

Every browser installed is another thing to configure, test and re-check. Keep one. Delete the rest. This makes every other layer on this site simpler and more likely to keep working.

Two more worth considering if you have been round this loop several times. Turning the screen to greyscale during your window makes feeds and video meaningfully less compelling, and costs nothing to try. And for a small number of people the honest answer is a simpler phone — either a basic handset, or a smartphone kept deliberately empty with a filtered browser and nothing else. That sounds extreme until you compare it with the amount of effort a fully hardened smartphone actually takes to maintain.

Raise the cost of the decision

A smaller category, but worth knowing about if delays and filters keep failing for you.

The thread running through all of these is the same idea as the rest of the site: you are not trying to make something impossible, you are trying to make it slow, deliberate and visible. Time and place do that earlier in the sequence than a filter can.

A workable weeknight version

If this page is too much, do these three and stop.

  1. Name the window. Write down the hours it actually happens.
  2. Charge the phone in another room, starting tonight.
  3. Set Downtime across that window, with a passcode you do not hold.
Then leave it a fortnight before adding anything else. If the window moved rather than closed, that is useful information: it tells you the next thing to change, and it is usually a place rather than a setting.

Where to go next

Urge plan

What to do inside the window, on the nights the schedule is not enough.

Set the passcode

Downtime and limits only hold if someone else holds the passcode. Here is how.

Routers

Scheduling access at the network level, where it is harder to argue with.