QuietlyIn short
To block an app on iPhone, open Settings, tap Screen Time, then App Limits, then Add Limit, choose the apps and set a daily amount. Turn on a Screen Time passcode as well, or the limit can be dismissed in one tap. For blocking by hours rather than by total time, use Downtime instead.
Method 1: App Limits
App Limits cap how much time you can spend in an app or category each day, and they are the closest thing iOS has to a built-in blocker. Setting one takes about two minutes.
- Open Settings and tap Screen Time.
- Tap App Limits, then Add Limit.
- Select the apps or whole categories you want to limit, then tap Next.
- Set the daily amount. Use Customise Days if it should differ across the week.
- Go back to the main Screen Time settings and turn on Use Screen Time Passcode.
That last step is the one people skip, and it is the one that matters. Without a passcode, hitting the limit produces a screen with an Ignore Limit button offering you 15 more minutes or the rest of the day. One tap, no friction, no record.
Where it breaks down: a daily budget is the wrong unit for most people. Forty minutes of Instagram is fine at lunchtime and a disaster at midnight, and a limit cannot tell the difference. It also resets at midnight, which is exactly the hour you least want a fresh allowance.
Method 2: Downtime
Downtime blocks everything except the apps you specifically allow, during a schedule you set. It is the right tool for protecting hours rather than budgets, and it is what most people should use for bedtime.
- Open Settings, tap Screen Time, then Downtime.
- Turn it on and choose Every Day or Customise Days.
- Set the start and end times.
- Go back and tap Always Allowed to pick what stays available. Phone and Messages usually belong here.
- Turn on Block at Downtime so the block holds rather than simply reminding you.
Where it breaks down: there is one Downtime window. If you want a firm block at 23:00 and a softer one during working hours, iOS makes you choose. It is also allow-list shaped rather than block-list shaped, which means protecting your evenings requires you to enumerate everything you still want, and you will forget something.
Method 3: Focus modes
Focus modes silence notifications and can hide apps and home screen pages, and they are genuinely useful for the invitation half of the problem. Set up a Work or Sleep Focus and the phone stops asking for your attention.
Where it breaks down: Focus does not stop an app opening. Hide Instagram from the home screen and it is still one swipe away in the App Library, still there in search, and it opens instantly when you get there. Focus reduces how often the phone interrupts you. It does nothing about the times you interrupt yourself, which for most people is the larger number.
Worth knowing
The distinction that matters across all of these: some tools reduce how often the phone asks for you, and some change what happens when you reach for it. Notification settings and Focus modes are the first kind. Downtime, App Limits and third-party blockers are the second. Most people set up the first kind and then wonder why nothing changed.
Method 4: deleting the app
Deleting is the strongest block available and the least durable. It works completely, for as long as it lasts, which is often about nine days.
It fails because it does not address why you opened the app. The group chat is still happening, the account you actually wanted to follow is still posting, and the friction of reinstalling is roughly 20 seconds. Worse, reinstalling feels like a personal failure rather than a predictable outcome, and that makes the next attempt less likely.
It is still the right answer for one case: an app you genuinely do not need at all. If nothing pulls you back, delete it and stop reading.
Method 5: third-party blockers
Third-party apps use Apple's Screen Time framework, which means they can shield apps but cannot see which apps they are shielding. Apple hands them opaque tokens instead of app names, so a blocker applies a shield to a selection it cannot read. That constraint is a privacy feature, and it is also why these apps ask for Screen Time permission before they can do anything.
What they add over Apple's own tools is shape. Several routines instead of one Downtime window. A step between the tap and the app. A limited allowance for getting in rather than an all-day override. Different apps handle this differently, which is covered in the guide to screen time apps for iPhone.
Where it breaks down: every one of them can be deleted. This is not a bug that a stricter app could fix, because a block you cannot remove on your own phone would be a security problem, and Apple will not allow it. The practical answer is not to make removal impossible but to make the block reasonable enough that you never want to remove it.
Can you block an app permanently?
No method on iPhone is permanent, because any block on your own device can eventually be undone by the person holding the device. That is by design.
The nearest approximations: an App Limit behind a Screen Time passcode that you have not memorised, or deleting the app. Both are reversible with enough determination. If you are trying to block apps on someone else's iPhone, that is a different mechanism entirely, and Apple's Family Sharing parental controls are the only supported way to do it.
The more useful framing is that permanence is not what you need. You need the reach for an app to stop being free. A block that costs you 10 seconds and one of five passes is not permanent, but it is expensive enough that reflexes stop paying it.
How Quietly fits
Quietly is a screen time app for iPhone built around the gap in the list above: several named routines rather than one Downtime window, a friction step before a blocked app opens, and a small number of timed passes instead of an Ignore Limit button.
You pick the apps, name the hours, and Quietly shields those apps during those hours using Apple's Screen Time permission. Reach for one and you get a short step first: a breath, a countdown, a typed reason. Then you either spend a pass, worth 1, 5 or 15 minutes, or you do not. Nothing is deleted either way.
Quietly is on the App Store
Pick your apps, set one routine, and see how many opens were never really decisions.
Which method to use
For bedtime, use Downtime with Block at Downtime turned on. It is free, it is built in, and one window is all you need for one hour.
For a specific app you lose whole afternoons to, use an App Limit with a Screen Time passcode. The passcode is not optional. Without it you are setting a reminder, not a limit.
For notifications and general noise, use a Focus mode, and do not expect it to change how often you open things yourself.
For different apps at different hours, or when you keep tapping Ignore Limit, that is where a third-party blocker earns its place. If none of those describe you, the built-in tools are enough and you should keep your money.