How to Block Apps on iPhone

The short answer: open Settings, tap Screen Time, then App Limits, then Add Limit. Choose the app, set the daily allowance to one minute, and switch on Block at End of Limit. That blocks it all day. Full walkthrough below, along with three other methods and an honest note on why Screen Time stops working for most people after about a fortnight.

iPhone has app blocking built in and it is genuinely capable. The problem is almost never the tooling. It is that every method Apple ships can be undone in two taps by the person it is meant to stop, which is you. So this covers how to set each one up, and then how to make it actually hold.

Method 1: Block an app with Screen Time limits

This is what most people want. It works per app or per category, and takes about a minute.

1. Open Settings and tap Screen Time. If you have never used it, turn it on.
2. Tap App Limits, then Add Limit.
3. Pick a whole category such as Social, or tap the arrow beside a category to expand it and tick individual apps.
4. Tap Next and set the time. One minute is the minimum, and setting it there effectively blocks the app for the whole day.
5. Turn on Block at End of Limit. Without this, the limit is only a suggestion.
6. Set a Screen Time passcode under Settings, Screen Time, Lock Screen Time Settings. Use something different from your unlock code.

Limits reset at midnight. If you want a particular window blocked instead, use Downtime in the same menu, which lets you schedule hours when only apps you have allowed will open.

Blocking one specific app rather than a category

Categories are blunt. Blocking all of Social takes out messaging apps you might genuinely need. To target a single app, tap the small arrow to the right of the category name in step 3 and the list expands into individual apps. Tick only what you want gone.

Method 2: Stop apps being downloaded at all

Blocking an app you have deleted is pointless if you can reinstall it in fifteen seconds, which is exactly what people do at 7am. Close that door too:

1. Go to Settings, Screen Time, Content & Privacy Restrictions.
2. Turn the toggle on.
3. Tap iTunes & App Store Purchases.
4. Tap Installing Apps and choose Don't Allow.

The App Store icon disappears from your home screen and nothing new can be installed until you change it back. Combined with deleting the app, this is the strongest blocking iOS offers natively.

Method 3: Block apps on a child's iPhone

The steps are the same, with one important difference: set it up through Family Sharing so the controls live on your device rather than theirs.

1. On your phone, go to Settings, tap your name, then Family Sharing, then Screen Time.
2. Choose the child's account.
3. Set App Limits, Downtime and Content & Privacy Restrictions exactly as above.
4. Set the Screen Time passcode yourself and do not share it.

Configured this way the child cannot lift the restriction, because changing it requires a passcode held on your device. This is the one situation where iPhone's blocking is genuinely robust, and the reason is instructive: it works because the person being blocked is not the person holding the key.

Method 4: Focus modes

Focus is the gentlest option. Go to Settings, Focus, and create one. You can choose which apps are allowed to notify you and even which apps appear on your home screen while it is active.

Focus hides and silences rather than blocks. Anyone determined can still open a hidden app through search. It is good for reducing temptation and useless as a hard stop, so treat it as a complement to method 1 rather than a replacement.

Why Screen Time stops working for most people

Here is the part most articles leave out. Screen Time works perfectly for about two weeks, and then quietly stops working. The reason is a design decision: when you hit a limit, the block screen offers Ignore Limit, and one of the options is Ignore For Today.

That button asks you to make a disciplined decision at the precise moment you are least capable of making one. You are already reaching for the app. The block is a speed bump, not a wall, and after a few days of tapping through it the whole thing becomes background noise.

Two things genuinely help:

• Set a Screen Time passcode you do not know from memory. Have someone else set it, or generate a random one and store it somewhere inconvenient. This is the single most effective free change you can make, and almost nobody does it.
• Replace the decision with an action. A block you can dismiss by tapping is not a block. A block that opens only after you have done something specific is one, because it converts a moment of willpower into a small task.

Can you block apps on iPhone permanently?

Not truly, and be sceptical of anything claiming otherwise. Anyone with the Screen Time passcode can undo every method here in under a minute, and that includes you.

What you can do is make undoing it expensive enough that you do not bother. In rough order of effectiveness:

1. Delete the app and block installs via Content & Privacy Restrictions
2. Use an app blocker that requires an action to unlock
3. One minute App Limit with Block at End of Limit, protected by a passcode you do not know
4. One minute App Limit with a passcode you do know
5. Focus mode

Most people jump to the last two, find them leaky within a fortnight, and conclude that blocking does not work. It does. They just picked the weakest options.

Which method should you use?

• Blocking a child's phone: method 3, via Family Sharing. Genuinely effective.
• One specific app you keep opening: method 1 with a one minute limit, plus a passcode you cannot recall.
• An app you have already tried to quit twice: method 2. Delete it and block reinstalls.
• Protecting a particular time of day, especially mornings: Downtime, or a blocker that requires an action to unlock.
• Just fewer interruptions: method 4.

Common questions

Does blocking an app delete its data?

No. App Limits and Downtime only prevent you opening it. Everything stays where it is. Deleting the app is different, and for most apps your account data lives on their servers and returns when you reinstall.

Can I block apps only at certain times?

Yes, that is what Downtime is for. Settings, Screen Time, Downtime lets you set a daily window, or different windows per day, during which only your allowed apps open.

What if I forget my Screen Time passcode?

You can reset it with the Apple ID you used when setting it up. Do add a recovery Apple ID when prompted, otherwise the only route back is erasing the device.

Do app blockers work better than Screen Time?

Only if they add something Screen Time lacks. Most of them wrap the same underlying Apple framework, so the raw blocking power is identical. What varies is the unlock condition. A blocker with a dismiss button is no better than Screen Time. One that requires you to complete something is meaningfully harder to bypass.

The one thing that matters

Every method here works on day one. The question is whether it still works on day fourteen, and that comes down entirely to what stands between you and the unlock.

If it is a decision, you will make the wrong one eventually, because you will be tired or bored or it will be 7am. If it is a small task, you will either do it or genuinely not need the app that badly. Pick the method that puts a task there rather than a button.