Your willpower runs out. The apps competing for your attention have a budget.

That’s not a character flaw, it’s an unfair fight, and the reasonable response is to put something between you and the reflex instead of trying to out-discipline a recommendation engine.

Here are ten free options, covering phone, laptop and browser. Free means genuinely free, not free trial.

How this list is sourced

Every App Store developer, star rating and rating count below was pulled from the US App Store on 11 August 2026. Behaviour descriptions come from the tools’ own listings and documentation.

Two of these are built into your phone already and cost nothing ever. The App Store apps here are free to download; several sell an optional upgrade, and where that’s true I’ve said so instead of quoting a subscription price that will be wrong by the time you read this.

Nothing paid is presented as free. Freedom, Opal and Cold Turkey Pro appear at the bottom, in a clearly separate section, because they are not free and it would be dishonest to pad the count with them.

No star scores of my own on this page. The only ratings shown are Apple’s.

Quick comparison

ToolPlatformBlocks appsBlocks sitesCost
iOS Screen TimeiPhone, iPadYesSafari onlyBuilt in
Android Digital WellbeingAndroidYesNoBuilt in
ScreenZeniPhonePause, not blockNoFree
one seciPhonePause, not blockSomeFree to download
JomoiPhoneYesYesFree to download
ForestiPhone, AndroidNoNoFree to download
StayFocusdChromeNoYesFree
LeechBlock NGFirefox, ChromeNoYesFree
Cold Turkey Blocker (free tier)Windows, macOSPaid tier onlyYesFree tier
SelfControlmacOSNoYesFree, open source

Already on your phone

iOS Screen Time

Free forever, no download, and better than most people give it credit for.

Setting it up

  1. Settings → Screen Time → turn it on
  2. Downtime → set the hours you want locked down
  3. App Limits → add a limit → pick apps or whole categories
  4. Set a Screen Time passcode that isn’t your unlock code

That last step is the one everybody skips and it’s the only thing that makes the rest work.

What it blocks: specific apps, whole categories like Social or Games, and websites in Safari.

The catch: one tap on “Ignore Limit” and you’re through. It also doesn’t reach in-app browsers, so a link opened inside Instagram sidesteps the whole thing.

Best for: awareness and a soft speed bump. Not force.

Android Digital Wellbeing

The Android equivalent, free and pre-installed on most devices.

Setting it up

  1. Settings → Digital Wellbeing & parental controls
  2. Dashboard → app timers
  3. Focus mode → select the apps to pause
  4. Bedtime mode → schedule the wind-down

What it blocks: apps during Focus mode, plus notification silencing.

The catch: no website blocking, easy to switch off, and the implementation varies by manufacturer — Samsung, Pixel and Xiaomi all ship different versions of it.

Free iPhone apps worth installing

ScreenZen — 4.9 stars, 47,105 ratings, free

The best free option on this page and the highest-rated. It doesn’t block apps, it interrupts them: you tap Instagram, ScreenZen holds you for a few seconds and asks what you’re opening it for. Most of the time the honest answer is nothing, and you close it.

If you don’t feel like you’re resisting an urge — because you’re already scrolling before you noticed deciding to — this is the right category of tool, and blocking is the wrong one.

one sec — 4.8 stars, 23,330 ratings, free to download

From riedel.wtf apps. The app that popularised the deliberate-pause idea: a breath-length delay before a chosen app opens, then a prompt asking whether you meant it. Free to download with a paid tier for the full set of features.

Jomo — 4.8 stars, 2,289 ratings, free to download

Actual blocking plus scheduling, for people who want rules that apply at set times rather than an all-day blanket. Free to download with a paid tier. Smallest rating count in this list, so read recent reviews.

Forest — 4.8 stars, 48,942 ratings, free to download

From SEEKRTECH. Plant a tree, stay in the app, it grows. Leave and it dies.

Two corrections. Forest is still described everywhere as a paid upfront app — as of 11 August 2026 it is free to download with optional paid features. And it blocks nothing at all. It’s a promise with a cartoon attached. Included here because it works for a lot of people, but do not install it expecting a lock.

Free browser blocking

StayFocusd — Chrome, free

Set a daily allowance for the sites that eat your day. Spend it and they’re gone until midnight. There’s also a Nuclear Option that blocks a list for a fixed period regardless of your allowance.

The catch: Chrome only, and it lives inside Chrome. Another browser, a second Chrome profile, or the phone in your pocket all route straight around it.

LeechBlock NG — Firefox and Chrome, free

More granular. Up to 30 separate blocklists, each with its own schedule and time allowance, plus password protection and a lockdown mode.

Best for people who want different rules at different times of day rather than one blanket list.

Free desktop blocking

Cold Turkey Blocker free tier — Windows and macOS

The most serious free desktop blocker. The free tier covers website blocking and scheduling. Blocking desktop applications is in the paid version, so if your problem is Steam rather than Twitter, the free tier won’t solve it.

There is no mobile version. It fixes the laptop half of your problem and nothing else.

SelfControl — macOS, free, open source

Add sites to a blacklist, set a duration, hit start. The block is enforced below the browser, so switching from Chrome to Safari does not help you, and neither does quitting the app, deleting it, or restarting the Mac. The timer runs out when it runs out.

The catch: no scheduling, and no undo. If you block something you turn out to need for work, you wait. Which is the point, and also the reason to set a modest duration the first time.

Are they all bypassable?

Mostly, and the honest answer has three parts. Most articles pick whichever part suits the app they’re selling.

iPhone blockers: yes, all of them. Every iOS blocker can be undone by someone determined enough. What they buy you is a detour long enough for the impulse to pass. That is genuinely useful and it is not the same as being locked out. Anyone marketing an unbreakable iOS lock is overselling.

Desktop blockers: harder than people think. SelfControl and a locked Cold Turkey block are difficult to lift on that machine before the timer expires. Within the session, on that computer, they hold.

All of them: your other devices are wide open. This is the real bypass and it’s the one nobody markets against. A perfect laptop block means nothing when the phone is on the desk. If you only fix one surface, the behaviour just relocates.

Do blockers actually work?

I’m not going to hand you a percentage.

You will find articles claiming a study found blocker users spent some precise share less time on blocked apps. Chase those citations and they mostly dissolve into other blog posts. This article previously carried one of them, with no author, no journal and no link. It’s been removed, because a number nobody can check is worth less than no number at all.

What can be said honestly: blocking is friction, and friction changes behaviour at the margin. It is very good at stopping the automatic pickup, and it does nothing about the reason you wanted to escape the task in the first place. If you’re opening TikTok because the essay is genuinely awful, blocking TikTok gets you a different escape, not more essay.

Blockers are a tool. The parts that actually stick are environment design, replacing the habit with something else, and knowing which feeling sends your hand to your pocket.

The free setup that covers everything

  1. Phone: iOS Screen Time or Android Digital Wellbeing, with a passcode you don’t use elsewhere
  2. Phone, second layer: ScreenZen, free, for the reflex Screen Time doesn’t catch
  3. Browser: StayFocusd on Chrome or LeechBlock NG on Firefox
  4. Laptop: Cold Turkey Blocker free tier, or SelfControl on a Mac

Phone, laptop and browser covered. Total cost zero. Set this up before you consider paying for anything.

When free isn’t enough

If you’ve run the free stack for a month and it isn’t holding, the paid options solve two things free ones generally don’t: one blocklist enforced across every device at once, and blocks that are harder to lift on impulse.

  • Freedom (Eighty Percent Solutions, 4.4 stars, 5,675 ratings) — one blocklist across phone, tablet and computer
  • Opal (OPAL OS CORPORATION, 4.7 stars, 85,634 ratings) — scheduled blocking with screen time reporting, on iPhone, Mac and Android
  • Cold Turkey Blocker paid version — adds desktop application blocking to the free site blocking

All three are free to download or offer a trial and then charge. Check the current price on the listing rather than trusting a figure in a blog post, including this one.

FAQ

What’s the best completely free focus app? ScreenZen on iPhone at 4.9 stars across 47,105 ratings, and Cold Turkey Blocker’s free tier on a laptop. Between them you’ve covered both screens for nothing.

Can I block YouTube but allow specific channels? Not cleanly with free tools. LeechBlock NG’s URL patterns get closest, and it’s fiddly.

Do blockers drain my battery? Not meaningfully. They’re vastly lighter than the apps they’re standing between you and.

What if I block something I actually need? Plan the list before you start the block, especially with SelfControl, where there’s no undo. Never block a work domain you can’t predict needing.

Is relying on a blocker a bad sign? No more than relying on an alarm clock. Nobody calls that a character defect.

Do I need more than one? Usually two: something on the phone and something on the laptop. A single-surface block just moves the behaviour to the other screen.

Related reads:

Disclosure: FocusTimer is mine

I build iOS apps, and FocusTimer is one of them — a plain pomodoro timer.

It does not appear in the comparison table, in any of the ten sections above, in the recommended free setup, or in a single FAQ answer. That’s deliberate: I compete in this category, so ranking my own product against the apps it competes with isn’t a test you should trust. It also isn’t a blocker, which is what this page is about. It is new and has very few App Store ratings so far, so there is not much of a crowd verdict to lean on either. Try it and judge for yourself.

Sources

  • App names, developers, ratings and rating counts: US App Store via the iTunes Search API, 11 August 2026.
  • Opal platform availability: opalapp.com, checked 11 August 2026.
  • Cold Turkey Blocker platform availability: getcoldturkey.com, checked 11 August 2026.

— Dolce