Evolve vs ScreenTimeGuard

Evolve makes the time you spend on your phone something you decide on, rather than something that happens to you. Pick the apps that pull you in. Evolve blocks them. When you want one, you hold a button, and one unbroken hold earns you one minute. The second minute costs more than the first, and the third costs more than that. A quick check stays cheap. An hour never sneaks up on you. There is no way to talk your way past it, because there is nothing to talk to. No streaks, no points, no badges. Just a price, paid in the moment, in full view. WHAT YOU SEE Where your day actually went, hour by hour, and which apps took it. A block screen that names the app you reached for and counts how many times you have reached for it today. Your real screen time, drawn by Apple on your device. PRIVACY Evolve collects nothing. There is no account and no server. The apps you block, the time you hold, and how you spend your day never leave your phone. Evolve is built for people who already want to change, and it does not pretend to be unbeatable. If you are determined to get around it, you will. It is here for the moments when you are not. Every minute should feel earned.

ScreenTimeGuard is a calm, minimal screen-time app for people who want fewer impulse opens. It is built around three ideas most blockers get wrong. You earn a budget of real app time. Most blockers start a countdown the moment you unlock, and the timer keeps running while your phone sits in your pocket. ScreenTimeGuard grants a usage budget instead: 1, 3, 5, or 10 minutes of actual app time, counted only while a blocked app is open. Reply to the message, put the phone down, come back later. One allowance can be spread across several openings until it is spent. Access is earned, not waited out. The signature unlock is a zip puzzle: draw one continuous line through every cell of a grid, passing numbered checkpoints in order. It asks for a moment of real attention — enough to interrupt autopilot, never enough to punish a genuine need. If you prefer arithmetic, switch to a math challenge instead. Both come in three difficulty levels. Your data stays yours. No account. No sign-up. No backend. No analytics or tracking SDKs. Your app groups, schedules, unlock history, and insights are stored on your device, never on a server of ours. Your groups, schedules, and preferences are also backed up to your own iCloud account so a reinstall or a new iPhone does not cost you your setup — we cannot read that copy, and your unlock history and insights are left out of it entirely. The app makes exactly one kind of network request: fetching the attributed daily quote on the dashboard, once a day. Without a connection, everything still works. Around those three ideas, an explicit rule system: - Recurring schedules block selected app groups during work, study, sleep, or any routine that matters to you. - During scheduled hours, each group is either fully blocked or set to solve-to-open. - Outside the schedule, leave apps free, or require a challenge and a time budget for every visit. - Block Now starts an immediate block, for a fixed duration or until you end it. - Emergency unlock stays available during a full block, with deliberate friction: an optional reason, a cooldown between uses, and an optional daily limit. Every use is recorded in your history. - Insights stay on the device: unlock attempts, emergency unlocks, and protected time. ScreenTimeGuard is built on Apple's Screen Time technology, using only Apple frameworks. Free for up to 3 apps. ScreenTimeGuard Premium is an auto-renewable subscription billed yearly, unlocking unlimited apps, whole app categories, and website blocking. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel in Settings > Apple ID > Subscriptions. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://joepbruin-hue.github.io/screentimeguard-privacy/ Friction here is intentional, never punitive. Pause the impulse, then choose.