Setting things up is a task for a calm moment, and trying to do it mid-urge usually ends with you deciding it is all pointless. Go to the urge plan, get through the next ten minutes, and come back to this page afterwards. It will still be here.
And if things are darker than that — if you are thinking about harming yourself — please contact a crisis line now. In the US and Canada, call or text 988. In the UK and Ireland, call 116 123. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com. A blocked phone is not the problem worth solving tonight.
1. Turn on what your device already has
Five minutes, no account, nothing to buy. Pick the device you actually reach for, not the one you use for work. Be honest about which one that is; setting this up on the wrong device is the most common way people waste an evening.
iPhone or iPad
This is where iPhone is genuinely strong. Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → turn on → App Store, Media, Web, & Games → Web Content → Limit Adult Websites.
This one setting also covers pages opened inside other apps, which is the gap most setups miss.
Android
Android has no built-in content filter for an adult's own account, so there is nothing useful to turn on here. Step 2 is your step 1.
While you are in Settings, delete browsers you do not use. Every extra browser is another thing to configure later.
Mac or Windows
The built-in filters are weaker than people assume: on a Mac it only covers Safari, on Windows only Edge. Worth turning on if that is the browser you use, but do not stop there.
Step 2 matters more on a computer.
2. Add a filter that covers every app
Ten minutes. This is the step that does the most work, on every platform, because it applies to everything on the device rather than one browser — including pages opened inside other apps, and including when you are on mobile data rather than home Wi-Fi.
- Pick one filtering DNS service. If you want the simplest possible thing with no account, use a free family resolver. If you want it to also keep a record and block the workarounds, use one with a dashboard.
- Set it up on the device from step 1. Most services walk you through this in a few taps.
- If the service offers it, turn on the setting that blocks proxies, VPNs and anonymisers, and the one that blocks newly registered domains. These are what stop the obvious way around a category filter.
3. Put it behind a passcode you do not hold
Three minutes, and this is the step that decides whether any of the above survives next week. Everything you just did can be undone in under a minute by you, tonight, in a worse mood.
The ideal is that someone else sets the passcode and you never see it. If nobody is available tonight, do this instead: generate a long random passcode, write it on paper, set it, and put the paper somewhere inconvenient — a sealed envelope, a drawer at a relative's house. Then hand it over properly when you can. An awkward temporary version tonight beats a perfect version you never get around to.
When you set a Screen Time passcode, iOS asks for an Apple Account for Screen Time Passcode Recovery. If you enter your own, you can reset the passcode any time you like and none of this counts. Enter the trusted person's Apple Account instead. If you have nobody yet, note that this prompt is the first thing to fix when you do.
4. Test it, in two minutes
Almost every failed setup was never tested. Do not skip this because you are tired; a setup you believe in but which does not work is worse than none, because you stop watching.
- Open a site you know is blocked, in your normal browser. Use a harmless one from your blocklist rather than searching for anything.
- Try it again in a different browser, and in a private window.
- Send yourself a link and open it from inside another app, so it opens in that app's own browser.
- Turn Wi-Fi off and try once on mobile data.
- Try to change the setting back. If you can, go back to step 3.
Then, this week: the part that makes it hold
The four steps above are worth doing alone. But every honest version of this eventually comes down to one thing, and it is not technical.
Tell one person. Someone steady, who will not hand the passcode straight back when you ask for it in a bad moment. Their job is not to police you or to read your history. Their job is to hold something you cannot get at, and to be willing to say no.
- Ask them. Trusted person has wording for the conversation if you do not know how to start it.
- Hand over the passcode, and on iPhone fix the recovery prompt from step 3.
- Agree what they should refuse, and what counts as a real emergency, before you need either.
- Later, when you have the energy: run the recovery audit to find the passwords and reset paths that could quietly undo all of it.
What to ignore for now
Consider this explicit permission to close the other tabs.
The rest of this site is written for specific problems that you may not have. Router configuration, browser policy files, device supervision, and Apple Configurator are all real answers to real gaps, and none of them are your first move. They matter when the simple version has failed in a specific way, and you will know which way that was when it happens.