Scheduled App Blocking: Set Your Weekly Blocking Hours

Block Distracting Apps at Specific Times

You know when it happens. The first twenty minutes of the morning, before anything has started. The hour after dinner that was going to be one video. The stretch between getting into bed and falling asleep.

These are not accidents. They are the same hours, most days, and you could name them right now without looking at a single statistic.

Schedule is for those hours. You draw them once, and the apps close by themselves when the time comes.

Scheduled App Blocking vs On-Demand Blocking

Schedule is one of the two protections that run on your decision — the long one, taken calmly, days ahead, about hours you can already name. It is also the most precise instrument here: not only when, but which apps, on which days, down to a slot that crosses midnight.

The Express widget is the same will on a shorter clock, spent in two seconds instead of in advance. Underneath both sit Delay Lock and Motion lock, which ask nothing of you — because the app you open at 23:40 was never on anybody's schedule.

Create Recurring Weekly App Blocking Slots

A slot is a start time, an end time, and the days it applies to. Monday to Friday, 7:00 to 9:00. Every evening, 21:00 to 23:00. Sunday afternoon, if that is when it gets away from you.

Slots can cross midnight — 23:00 to 1:00 is a single slot, not two — and you can have as many as the week needs.

When a slot begins, your blocked apps close on their own. When it ends, they open again. You do not have to be holding the phone, and you do not have to remember.

Block Different Apps at Different Times

This is the part that makes Schedule worth setting up properly.

Each slot can carry its own list of apps. The morning slot can block social media and leave your messages alone. The evening slot can block games and leave social media alone. The bedtime slot can block everything.

A slot without its own list falls back to your usual selection, so you can start simple and refine later.

Build Your Weekly Blocking Schedule Faster

A slot can be born on several days at once: pick the hours, tick the days, and five identical slots appear. An existing slot can be duplicated the same way, by long-pressing it.

Overlapping slots are refused rather than silently merged — if a new slot collides with one that already exists on that day, Upchin tells you instead of quietly doing something you did not ask for.

Pause a Scheduled Block for Five Minutes

A scheduled slot does not behave like other blocks, and this is deliberate.

During a slot, the Back IRL button does not end it. It interrupts it for five minutes, and then the slot resumes on its own.

The reason is in the nature of the thing. You set the slot in advance, calmly, deciding what kind of evening you wanted. The moment you want to cancel it is precisely the moment your judgment is worst — and a protection that you can switch off in that moment is a protection that was never there. Five minutes is enough to take a real call or look something up. It is not enough to lose the evening.

If a slot truly no longer fits your week, change it in Schedule, where you are not in the middle of wanting it gone.

What Schedule Is Not

It is not a calendar. It does not read your meetings and it does not know you are on holiday. A slot runs on the days you drew, every week.

It does not stack with other blocks. If a slot starts while another block is already running, it waits and takes over at the end rather than cutting it short.

It is not a hard lock. Five minutes of interruption is always available, and nothing stops you editing your own week.

It does nothing with an empty list. A slot with no apps — its own or inherited — has nothing to close.