App Guardian

App Gatekeeper is a self-blocking iOS app for adults who want deliberate friction before opening distracting apps. It is designed for people who want to manage their own device. It is not a parental-control tool and is not intended for supervising a child.

Design philosophy

App Gatekeeper does not try to force you to stop using an app. It adds a small pause between the reflex tap and the actual scroll. Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and any other app you tend to open without thinking can be set to always blocked. When you really want to use one, you open App Gatekeeper and deliberately choose how long to unlock. The goal is to replace a reflex with a decision.

Features

• Choose what to block Use Apple's FamilyActivityPicker to pick the apps you want to block. Selections are handled as opaque tokens for privacy, so the app itself cannot read which specific apps you picked. App Gatekeeper is app-only: category-wide selection and web-domain blocking are not supported, because Apple's category database has gaps and web-domain shields only affect Safari (not Chrome, Firefox, etc.), which makes both unreliable.

• Always-on blocking by default The apps you choose stay blocked unless you explicitly unlock them. A simple, message-based shield screen appears every time you try to open them.

• Deliberate temporary unlock Tap "Temporarily allow" on the shield to deep-link back into App Gatekeeper with the unlock sheet pre-scoped to that single app. Pick 5, 10, 30, 60 minutes, or a custom duration. The dashboard also offers a full unlock for every blocked app at once. When the time is up, DeviceActivity re-applies the shield automatically.

• Up to 8 concurrent unlock sessions Run up to 8 independent unlock windows at once, each with its own timer for a different app. Give your work tool 60 minutes and social apps 10 minutes at the same time — every session expires on its own schedule.

• Unlock as often as you want There is no daily cap on how many times you can unlock. As long as the unlock is a deliberate choice, you don't have to count.

• 5 apps free, Unlimited Plan one-time purchase The free tier lets you register up to 5 apps in the blocklist. If you want to block more, the Unlimited Plan (one-time purchase, no subscription) lifts the cap permanently.

• Fully on-device No account. No sign-in. No server calls. No analytics SDKs, no ad SDKs, no tracking identifiers. Every setting lives on your iPhone.

Screen Time permission

App Gatekeeper asks for Screen Time permission the first time you launch it. It uses the Individual authorization mode, where you manage your own device. Parental or child modes are not used. The permission is required for FamilyControls, ManagedSettings, and DeviceActivity — the Apple system frameworks that enforce the block on your behalf.

Shield screen

Blocked apps present a quiet, message-only shield — short text and the Temporarily-allow / Never-mind buttons. There are no images, no animations, nothing intended to hold your attention. The friction itself is the feature.

What it is not

• Not a parental-control app or passcode vault
• Not a permanent lock — you can always unlock with a deliberate action
• Not a tool for managing someone else's device

App Gatekeeper is a self-regulation tool. You can always unlock. The point is the small moment of pause before you do, and the way that pause can change how you use your phone over time.