App blockers for studying: how to keep your phone from stealing your focus

Why the phone wins

Social apps, video and games are built to be opened often. Each notification, badge and new post is a small invitation to stop what you are doing. The cost is bigger than the minutes you spend on the phone. Attention researcher Gloria Mark found that after an interruption it takes on average about 23 minutes to get fully back to the original task.

Even a silent phone can pull at your attention. In a 2017 study by Adrian Ward and colleagues, people did better on memory and reasoning tasks when their phone was in another room. A later replication did not find the effect, so it is not settled science, but keeping the phone away is a cheap experiment.

Three levels of blocking

Free options built into iOS

• Focus modes. Create a Study Focus in Settings and allow only the apps and people you need. Notifications from everything else are silenced. The apps themselves still open if you tap them.
• App Limits. In Settings, Screen Time, set a daily limit for categories such as Social or Entertainment. When the limit is reached, a shield appears. Without a passcode, you can ignore it with one tap.
• Downtime. Schedule hours when only allowed apps are available, for example every weekday from 9 to 12.
• Make it stick. Turn on Block at End of Limit and let a friend or family member set the Screen Time passcode. Then extending a limit actually costs something.

How session app blockers work on iPhone

Since iOS 15 and 16, Apple lets apps use the Screen Time system (the Family Controls framework) to shield apps that you choose. The blocking app never sees which apps you picked. iOS hands it anonymous tokens, and your selection stays on your device. During a session, a shield screen appears when you try to open a blocked app, and it disappears when the timer ends.

The difference to App Limits is timing: a session blocker locks apps exactly while you study, not after you have already spent an hour on them.

How to set up a study blocker that sticks

1. Block what actually pulls you away. Look at your Screen Time report and pick the top three to five apps. Usually social media, short video, games, news and shopping.
2. Keep what you need. Calls, messages from family, music, a dictionary, your calculator, the learning app for your course.
3. Tie blocking to a timer. Blocking that only runs during a 25 or 50 minute session feels fair, so you will keep using it.
4. Plan the break. Decide what you do in the five minutes between sessions. If the break is the phone, put a timer on it too.
5. Do not block everything. If the blocker gets in your way for normal life, you will switch it off within a week.

What to block and what to keep

Common mistakes

• Moving the scroll to the laptop. If you study on a computer, use a website blocker there too.
• A blocker without a plan. A locked phone does not tell you what to study. Write the first task down before the timer starts.
• Punishing yourself after a slip. One broken session is not a reason to drop the system. Start the next one.

Using Sprout as a study blocker

Sprout combines a Pomodoro timer with an app blocker built on iOS Screen Time. In Settings, grant Screen Time access, choose the apps that distract you and switch on Block during sessions. Those apps stay shielded until the timer ends, while a plant grows on your screen and on the Lock Screen. Sprout never sees which apps you chose. Blocking needs iOS 16 or later.

Not sure how long each study session should be? FocusVille has a guide on how long a Pomodoro should be.