Block Screen Messages: Customize What You See When Apps Are Blocked

The Screen You See When an App Is Blocked

Everything else in Upchin is preparation. The selection, the rules, the slots — you set them once and then you forget them, which is the idea.

The block screen is the part you actually meet. It appears at the moment the app has done its job, when you have opened something you had decided to leave alone, and it is the only thing standing between the decision you made earlier and the one you are about to make now.

So it had better say the right thing.

How Upchin’s Block Screen Adapts to Each Protection

A block screen that always says the same sentence stops being read after a week. Upchin's changes with the reason you are looking at it, because the reasons are not the same.

When you simply opened a blocked app, it asks a question rather than issuing an instruction:

Take 3 seconds. Breathe. Is this really what you want to do right now, or is it just a reflex? You can come back later, when it’s a choice.

When you started the block yourself, from the button or the widget, it does not lecture you. You already did the hard part:

You activated this shield yourself. Trust yourself — this is your choice acting, not a reflex.

When Motion lock caught you walking, the title is two words — Chin up — because anything longer would be asking you to keep reading a screen while you cross a road.

When a usage limit ran out, it is plain and factual: the limit you set has been reached, put the phone down, come back later. You set that number; nobody is scolding you with it.

Write Your Own App Block Screen Messages

If none of those sound like you, replace them.

You can write up to ten messages of ninety characters, and they take turns on the block screen — a different one each time you are blocked, stable for the length of that block so the text does not shuffle while you read it.

They appear exactly as you wrote them. Upchin never translates them, never reformats them, never fixes your punctuation. If you write in your own language to a future version of yourself, that is what shows up. It is the one place in the app where the words are not ours.

Turn the feature off and the default texts come back. Your messages are kept, not deleted.

Temporarily Unlock Important Apps from the Block Screen

Some block screens carry a second button. It appears when the app you opened is one you marked as important — banking, authentication codes, messages — and it opens that app for a couple of minutes before the block returns.

It is only there for apps you chose in advance. Nothing can be unlocked on impulse.

What the Block Screen Is Not

It is not a paywall for your attention. There is no countdown you can watch, no “skip” that gets faster if you tap enough.

It is not fully customisable. You write the message; the titles and the buttons stay as they are. A block screen that could be edited into something meaningless would be a block screen you could disarm without noticing.

The button does not always unlock. In the lighter mode used by Express, Motion lock and the widget, acknowledging the screen lifts the block — that mode exists for blocks that have no duration. Everywhere else the block runs until its time is up.

It cannot be made to go away faster. That is the entire feature.