Upchin vs OffScreen

The same signal, the opposite answer

OffScreen is the only other app in this comparison that knows you are walking right now.

It reads motion and location to establish that you are looking at the screen while moving, and when it decides you are, it sends you this: "Stop use the screen while walking — It's dangerous and you should put down your device now." Their privacy policy is explicit about where they stand: in English and in Chinese, it says location and motion data are used only to send notifications.

Motion lock reads the same thing and closes the apps. GPS confirms displacement of more than 5 metres and only counts it when the margin of error on the reading is smaller than that distance — otherwise indoor GPS drift would block you while you sit still. When the walk is real, the apps you chose close, with nothing to launch. It is the pavement and the metro stairs — the places where looking at your screen costs the most.

The whole page sits in that gap, and it is a real disagreement about what an app should do with a signal, not a hole in anybody's feature list. They warn you and leave the decision to you; we decide in advance so you do not have to while walking. The table carries the date it was checked.

What OffScreen has that Upchin does not

It costs almost nothing. Their yearly subscription is $4.49, ours is $29.99. On a subscription, Upchin is free and fully featured for 7 days; then it is paid, and you can cancel at any time.

It measures more finely than we do — per app, per pickup, per hour, and right onto your watch face. Upchin has a watch app too, but we do not do that. If what you need is to understand where the hours go, OffScreen is built for it and we are not.

Its privacy label is as clean as any here, and there is no account: syncing goes through your own iCloud, into a private database they say they cannot read. Ours declares no tracking either — this is a tie they take by a hair on simplicity. No advertising purpose is declared either.

It reaches more phones, iOS 17 against our iOS 26, and its reminders are gentler than our blocks, which for some people is exactly what makes the habit stick.

And one row where it matches us, which we would not have found in any text. Their third screenshot shows a profile the user has named — "💪 Work Hard" — that owns both its own blocked app selection and its several time windows, 09:30–12:00 and 14:00–18:30. The Chinese set shows the identical structure. Nothing in their text says so; it is entirely in the picture. On this row OffScreen matches us.

It really does block, and that is not what it looks like

Everything about OffScreen looks like a measurement app that happens to have a blocker bolted on. The impression is misleading, and the first row of our table is a pass.

OffScreen has a named blocking feature — App Shield — with scheduled weekly windows, a separate OFF Time mode, and a hard mode inside its focus sessions. Their privacy policy puts it plainly: they use Apple's Screen Time API to let you block apps.

It is fair to call it tracker-led: the App Store title is "Screen Time Control", seven of their ten screenshots are charts, and their description never even uses the word "block" — it says "disable". But the blocking is first-class, and saying otherwise would have been the easy, flattering error.

One of their windows runs from 9:30 PM to 7:30 AM, which also makes OffScreen the only app here we could confirm handles a schedule that crosses midnight.

When a limit is not a limit

Their main screen shows "Limit: 4h". It is not a limit in the sense our table means.

Their Chinese listing is clearer than their English one: the goal reminds you when you are about to reach it. The same is true of their pickup counting — the notification reads "Hey, night owl! After bedtime 11:00PM, you've picked up 1 time…" — and of all three of their challenges, which their own copy frames as gentle reminders. Even the one that sounds most like ours is a message: "Take a Break — You've spent 20m on your screen this pickup, it's better to take a break now."

Delay Lock does not suggest. You open a blocked app, you get your grace period, and then the door closes for a length you set and reopens on its own. Nothing is asked of you at the moment it matters; the setting was made calmly, beforehand.

Neither approach is wrong. But a table that scored "Limit: 4h" as a usage-triggered block would be reading the interface rather than the documentation, and that is an easy mistake to make.

The web, and what their screenshots do not say

OffScreen blocks no websites, and that one is clear-cut: the words website, browser, Safari and URL appear in none of their published material — not the description in either language, not the twenty-five release notes, not the three pages of their site. Their allow list exists, but it lives inside a focus session: a list of apps you can still use while you concentrate. Nothing comparable is documented for App Shield.

Upchin's web lock is standing — everything is blocked except the sites you allow, and it holds outside any rule. It carries a cost we print in our own app: it blocks web pages inside apps too, and our text tells you not to use it if that is too much.

One last row stays open, and it hangs on their screenshots rather than their text: their English block screen shows an owl above a fixed line, "Success comes to those who act.", while the Chinese one shows a completely different aphorism, 一寸光阴不可轻. Two unrelated mottos in two locales is consistent with localised vendor copy and with text the user typed; nothing published says which. We report that it is unstated rather than guess — where Upchin shows up to ten sentences you typed yourself.

The short version

OffScreen costs seven times less than we do, measures more finely, puts your figures on your watch face, and its privacy label is faultless. None of that is in dispute.

OffScreen if what you want is to understand where your hours go, and if a reminder at the right moment is enough to make you put the phone down.

Upchin if the reminder is not enough. Same signal, opposite answer: where it warns you that you are walking, we close the apps — plus a standing web lock, your own sentences on the screen, and the app in twenty-one languages against their three.