Kaizen vs ScreenTimeGuard

Kaizen is a focus timer that blocks your distracting apps, tracks your habits, and lets you study alongside others in live focus rooms. Start a session and the apps you picked stay blocked until your break. Free to use, with no ads. Premium features are marked below. POMODORO TIMER & STOPWATCH • Presets: Classic (25/5/15), Quick (15/3/10), Extended (50/10/30), Long Focus (90/15/30), or your own • Focus 5 to 180 minutes, short breaks 1 to 60, long breaks 5 to 120 • Stopwatch: count up with no fixed end and finish when you're ready • Auto-start runs sessions back to back while Kaizen is open, up to your long break • Keeps time in the background and notifies you when a session or break ends • Fullscreen mode that shows only the timer • Tag each session (Work, Study, and more) to see where your focus goes APP BLOCKER Kaizen uses Apple's Screen Time to block the apps and websites you choose, even with Kaizen closed: • During focus sessions, until your break • Block now: until you turn it off • Schedules: block a set of apps at the same times every week • An optional "Open anyway" button: you set how often, how long to wait, and for how long • Free: up to 3 apps or websites and 1 schedule • Premium: up to 50 apps and 8 schedules, Strict mode (stays blocked when you pause) and Locked mode (no ending a session or schedule early, with one emergency end a week) Your choices stay on your device. Kaizen can't see which apps you picked. HABIT TRACKER • Check-off habits, or timed habits your focus sessions count toward • Schedules: daily, specific weekdays, or a number of times per week • Forgiving streaks: a skipped day doesn't break them • A consistency score and trend chart for every habit • Backdate any past day and keep your full history • Reminders that follow each habit's schedule • Up to 5 active habits free, unlimited with Premium FOCUS ROOMS Stay on task next to other people, without a video call: • Join any room free, or host a private one and invite up to 3 friends with a link • See who's focusing, on a break, or paused, with live timers • No camera or microphone, just your avatar and quiet company • Premium: host public or bigger rooms (up to 50 people), and share the task you're working on Many people with ADHD use this kind of body doubling to get started and keep going. TASKS • Jot a task down in one line now, plan the details later • An unlimited inbox, so capturing a thought never hits a limit • Priorities, due dates, subtasks, time estimates, and reminders • Pick a task before a session and your focus time counts toward it • Today, Tomorrow, and Overdue badges keep deadlines in view • Up to 7 planned tasks free, unlimited with Premium THEMES & FOCUS MUSIC • 70+ backgrounds across Lofi, Nature, City, Cozy, Space, and Minimal, including animated ones • Lo-fi, ambient, nature, white noise, and classical tracks, saved for offline listening • Mute music on your breaks • Premium: every theme, the full music library, and your own photo as the background STATISTICS & STREAKS • Daily, weekly, and monthly focus totals • Charts for focus over time, by hour, by weekday, by tag, and by session type • Session history showing which tasks and habits each session counted toward • Re-tag or delete any past session • A daily focus streak • Premium: yearly and all-time statistics MADE FOR • Students studying for their exams • Remote workers and freelancers who need time for deep work • People with ADHD who focus better with structure and company • Anyone who reaches for their phone when they should be focusing WORKS EVERYWHERE Use Kaizen on iPhone, iPad, your computer, or the web. Your tasks, habits, and stats sync across all of them. Start a focus session, block your distracting apps, and see how much more you get done. Terms of Use (EULA): https://my-kaizen.com/eula Privacy Policy: https://my-kaizen.com/privacy Terms & Conditions: https://my-kaizen.com/terms Questions? Reach us at support@my-kaizen.com

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.