Comparison

ClearSpace vs Furlough

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ClearSpace

This app helps you regain control over your phone usage by blocking distractions and limiting addictive app access. It encourages mindful decision-making about screen time, fostering better focus and digital wellbeing.

Highlights
  • Block and limit distracting apps
  • Manage social media doomscrolling
  • Set focus schedules
  • Encourage habit change
  • Engage in screen time challenges
  • Minimalist design
  • Accountability partners
  • Screen time reporting
Features
Read full description

Controlling Screen Time is critical for mental health, focus, productivity, and relationships. Social media and other addictive apps can easily distract you from your goals. Clearspace helps you control screen time by giving you the tools to fight phone addiction by making your phone less addictive. Clearspace blocks distractions while retaining utilities. Say goodbye to impulse opens and social media doom scrolling. You don’t need to quit cold turkey or buy a dumb phone in order to get your scrolling in check. Instead of a new device, Clearspace gives you the freedom to make sober minded decisions about your usage allowing you to get control of your screen time. Attention is a precious resource, protect it with Clearspace features: - Block and Limit apps: block any apps you find distracting and limit screen time. - Social Media Doomscrolling: app time limits enable session management makes sure you don’t scroll for too long. - Focus management: set schedules for when to use apps - Habit change: dopamine is less powerful when you pause before opening an app which eventually creates a virtuous habit loop to make habits more atomic. - Screen Time Challenges: train your attention by engaging in challenges that strengthen your ability to focus. - Minimalist Design: the app is straightforward. We don’t want to take your attention away, instead we give it back to you. - Screen Time Accountability: have trusted accountability partners help you stick to your goals. - Screen Time Reporting: Streaks and budgets give you a better look at your screen time data in a way that helps you improve. - Digital Wellbeing: Align your intentions with your usage of your phone. Alignment can be helpful in health journeys battling anxiety and adhd. Blocking Apps helps you control impulse clicks. Users find that Clearspace helps them: - Reduce social media impulse opens - Focus on deep work and engage in flow state activities Social Media Doomscrolling is the cause of excessive screen time for many people, with Clearspace users report that: - Phone Addiction subsides - Dopamine craving for apps is less powerful Digital Minimalism is a new health wave that Clearspace enables for users: - Limiting apps in alignment with your intention - Mindfulness practices encourage a more balanced approach to phone usage Digital Wellbeing is a large and growing consideration in the health and wellness spaces. Clearspace users have found it helpful in dealing with: - Anxiety - ADHD - Depression - Socializing Research demonstrates that negative habits are hard to change through willpower alone, but that small, recurring nudges are effective at reshaping default patterns of behavior. Enter Clearspace. The idea is simple: - Select an app that you want to use less - When you click on a selected app, decide - proceed after a deep breath or opt out? - Over time, you'll notice you are in control of the usage Controlling Screen Time is essential for digital wellbeing, freedom from phone addiction, and maintaining focus. Clearspace empowers users with app limits, screen time control, and an app blocker to combat social media distractions. By aligning intentions with usage, Clearspace fosters healthier habits and a mindful approach to technology. Its minimalist design ensures attention is not diverted, enabling users to reclaim their time and break free from the grips of excessive screen time. With features such as screen time reporting, accountability partners, and challenges, Clearspace offers the tools needed to reshape default patterns of behavior and reduce the powerful hold of dopamine-driven app cravings. Embrace Clearspace as your ally in the journey towards a balanced digital lifestyle. Clearspace is a diet program for your digital consumption. A reminder to breathe before making decisions. Terms: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy: https://getclearspace.notion.site/Privacy-Policy-05fb16506a294132acee914a8f6e5331

About

Furlough

This app helps you regain control of your digital life by blocking distracting apps and websites. It offers two powerful methods: timed rules with daily budgets and NFC-based locking for instant access removal. Designed for focused productivity, it ensures you stay on track without easy bypasses.

Highlights
  • App and website blocking
  • Timed rules with daily budgets
  • NFC tag unlocking
  • Customizable schedules
  • Delay for rule changes
  • Shielded apps cannot be deleted
Features
Read full description

Furlough is an app blocker with no unblock button, and two ways to use it. Rules give an app the hours it is allowed and a daily budget, and loosen only after a delay you set in advance. The Anchor locks a list, or the whole phone, in one tap, and lifts only when you hold the phone to an NFC tag you paired. Use either on its own. THE ANCHOR One tap and everything on the list is gone. No timer to wait out, no code to type: the only thing that releases it is a physical NFC tag held to the phone. You supply the tag, and any NTAG sticker works. Up to three pair at once, so a key can live wherever you do. Switch its scope and the list turns inside out: every app and website is shielded and the list becomes what stays open. It can drop on a schedule — ten at night on school nights, lifted by the tag in the morning — and it carries to Furlough for Mac, which only your phone's tag will lift. While it is on, neither the list nor the tags can be edited, so no key can be cut from under the lock. RULES Pick the apps and websites that eat your time, from Apple's own picker. Give each a daily budget in minutes and, if you want, the hours it is allowed: eight to ten on school nights, later on weekends, different every day if you like. Outside its hours, or once the budget is spent, iOS shields it until it is due to open again. THE DELAY A shorter window, a smaller budget, a day taken off: those apply the moment you save. A longer window, a bigger budget, removing an app: those wait out a delay you chose beforehand, 24 hours by default. While it waits, a list shows the rule you have now against the one queued to replace it, cancellable until it lands. Each app gets a tier that scales its delay: Essential a quarter of the base, Useful the base, Idle twice, Hazard four times. Moving one toward Essential shortens its future delays, which is itself a loosening, so that waits too. Blocking something you need is warned about by name before you save: a messaging app stops texted codes arriving, an authenticator stops you signing in. With no emergency unblock, that is the last cheap moment to change your mind. THE SHIELD The block screen says which app is closed and when it opens next. That is the whole conversation: no snooze, no code, no one more minute. While anything is shielded, iOS refuses app deletion, so an app cannot be deleted to escape its rule. WEBSITES A site picked from Apple's picker behaves like an app: hours, a daily budget, Furlough's own shield. A site typed in by name goes to the system's web filter instead: hours but no budget, and iOS's block page, not Furlough's. THE WAY OUT There is one, it is Apple's, and it always works: Settings, Screen Time, Apps with Screen Time Access, Furlough, off. It lifts every shield at once. Furlough cannot prevent it and documents it on purpose. Everything else assumes you'd rather not. ALSO IN THE APP A home screen widget that enlarges for StandBy, a Control Center button and a Focus that drop the Anchor, and a Live Activity counting down the open window. Notifications at every edge: a window opening, five minutes before it closes, a budget about to run out, and a weekly digest. A record of streaks and hours shielded. A week of hours drawn on a grid, one app's rule copied onto any number of others, and a clock you cannot set forward to buy time. PRIVACY No account, no server, no analytics, no third-party code. Apple's Screen Time API is built so Furlough is never told which apps you picked. Rules stay on the iPhone that made them; what leaves it, once you link your devices, goes to your own iCloud alone — the Anchor's state, so your Mac locks with it, and the names of what you add if you let it. REQUIREMENTS iPhone, iOS 18 or later. Screen Time access, which iOS grants only to an adult Apple Account. Furlough asks for individual authorization: the person setting the rules and the person kept to them are the same. Not a parental control app.

Screenshots

ClearSpace4 screens
Furlough4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Furlough at none against ClearSpace's 7. Furlough also leads on ads (none vs shown) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). ClearSpace's advantage is ratings volume (9K vs 1) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). On price, update cadence and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. ClearSpace sells 7 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Furlough asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Furlough holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: ClearSpace has 9K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on November 13, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
ClearSpace versus Furlough: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterClearSpaceFurlough
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (9K ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews69.3% of reviews—
Number of ratings9K — better1
Update frequencyFortnightlyFortnightly
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS16.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size80 MB12 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperclearspaceZach Short

Customer experience

ClearSpace

All ratings8,971 ratings
Positive94.2%
Neutral2.4%
Negative3.4%
Written reviews615 reviews
Positive69.3%
Neutral12.2%
Negative18.5%

Furlough

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

ClearSpace

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Crashes when trying to block apps
  • Notification issues and UI glitches
  • Inconsistent tracking of app usage
  • Problems with phone number verification

Requested features

5 requests
  • Allow blocking multiple apps in free version
  • Add more exercise options beyond just breathing
  • Provide more customization options
  • Integrate with other fitness/health tracking apps
  • Improve website/app blocking capabilities

Furlough

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

7 purchases

ClearSpace

Subscriptions7
  • ClearSpace Premium (Monthly)$6.991 Month
  • ClearSpace Premium (Annual)$44.991 Year
  • Clearspace Premium7 Days trial$44.991 Year
Show 4 more
  • Clearspace Premium3 Days trial$49.991 Year
  • Clearspace Premium7 Days trial$49.991 Year
  • Clearspace Premium7 Days trial$59.991 Year
  • Clearspace Premium Family$79.991 Year
None

Furlough

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is ClearSpace free?
ClearSpace is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Furlough free?
Furlough is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, ClearSpace or Furlough?
Furlough is rated higher. ClearSpace averages 4.7 out of 5 from 9K ratings, while Furlough averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do ClearSpace or Furlough have ads?
ClearSpace shows ads; Furlough does not.
Which is updated more often, ClearSpace or Furlough?
ClearSpace ships an update fortnightly, and Furlough fortnightly. Most recently, ClearSpace was updated on November 13, 2026 and Furlough on October 31, 2026.

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