Nightcap: Bedtime App Blocker

Nightcap is a bedtime app blocker for people who keep scrolling past the time they meant to sleep.

You planned to sleep at 10. It's 1am, you're still on Instagram, and tomorrow is already ruined. Nightcap is built for that exact moment.

WHY THIS APP BLOCKER IS DIFFERENT

Most screen time apps take your phone away. They black out your apps from 10pm to 7am and hope you don't uninstall them by Thursday. Plenty of people do.

Nightcap doesn't build a wall. It gives you a closing time.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Set your bedtime and pick your apps
Choose the apps that keep you up — social, video, news, games, anything that pulls you back. Set the hour your night should end.

2. The wait
Open one of those apps after bedtime and Nightcap stops you. A timer starts. Two minutes, or whatever you set. You can't skip it. Often you'll put the phone down before it finishes — the urge fades faster than the wait.

3. The window
If you still want in after the wait, you choose to open it — for five minutes, or whatever you set. Then it pauses again, and the next unlock waits in full.

That's it. No shame screens, no streaks to lose, no lectures.

WHAT YOU GET

• A wait timer before every app launch after bedtime
• A fixed access window — you decide how long
• Block apps one by one — only the ones that keep you up
• A bedtime schedule that runs automatically every night
• Weekly insights: how often you reached for an app, and how often you chose sleep instead
• Block apps only during your bedtime window — your days are untouched
• Calls, messages and emergency services are never blocked
• Works with any app on your phone — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, X, games
• No account required

WHO IT'S FOR

• Anyone whose sleep schedule is broken by their phone, not their brain
• People who tried Digital Wellbeing, Focus Mode and Do Not Disturb and swiped straight past all three
• Anyone who has said "one more video" at 2am
• People who want a digital detox that doesn't mean putting the phone in a drawer
• Anyone fighting phone addiction who has found that hard blocks don't hold
• Anyone who has installed an app blocker before and uninstalled it within a week

WHY A WAIT WORKS WHEN A BLOCK DOESN'T

A hard block starts a fight. You want the app, the app is gone, so you disable the blocker — and now you have no protection at all. A wait doesn't fight you. It puts two minutes between the impulse and the app, and the impulse often doesn't survive the gap.

Doomscrolling isn't a willpower problem. It's a friction problem. Nightcap is an app blocker built around that one idea.

ABOUT SCREEN TIME AT NIGHT

For a lot of people, late-night phone use is why a sleep schedule never holds — just one more scroll. If you've tried to reduce screen time before and it didn't stick, the block probably wasn't the problem. The all-or-nothing was.

Nightcap is a screen time limit that bends instead of breaking. Set it once and let it run. Check Insights each week to see how many nights you protected, and how often you chose sleep over the scroll.

PRIVACY

Everything stays on your phone. Nightcap does not collect your app usage, does not send it anywhere and does not need an account. There is nothing to sell because nothing leaves the device.

Download Nightcap — the bedtime app blocker that gives your night a closing time.