FocusFirst Screen Time Control vs Silk

Take back control of your time. FocusFirst helps you spend less time scrolling and more time on the things that actually move your life forward. Whether you’re studying, building a business, learning a language, reading, exercising, or simply trying to be more intentional with your day, FocusFirst gives you a better way to protect your attention. Most apps compete for your focus. FocusFirst helps you reclaim it. Instead of relying on willpower alone, FocusFirst helps you build healthy boundaries around the apps that pull you off course. Block the distractions that interrupt your momentum, focus on something meaningful, and earn time back as you make progress. It’s a simple idea, but it changes the feeling of using your phone: - less mindless checking - less guilt - less friction when you want to stay on track - more momentum toward the work, habits, and routines you care about FocusFirst is built for people who want a calmer, more deliberate relationship with their phone. Not punishment. Not shame. Just a clearer way to stay aligned with your priorities. Focus first. Scroll later. FocusFirst is free to download, but a subscription is required to use the app. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Silk blocks the apps you choose and gives you one daily budget of minutes to open the ones you name. To open a blocked app, type or dictate a whole sentence naming the app and the minutes, for example "unlock Instagram for 10 min." Silk shows a short wait, a few seconds that grow with the minutes you asked for, then subtracts the minutes from the day's budget, opens the app, and shows the time it locks again. It never locks early. If you stop using the app, a grant under 15 minutes can stay open for about 16 minutes. When the budget is used up, Silk refuses the request. During your down hours it refuses and shows the time they end. HOW IT WORKS • One block list. Pick the apps you want blocked, once. They stay blocked until you spend minutes on one of them, and they lock again after the minutes run out. • Named apps. Choose up to six you expect to ask for, from Silk's list of popular apps (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, X and more). The name is what you type or say, and it is the app Silk opens. Any other app you block stays shut. • One budget. One number of minutes for all of them, for the whole day. • An optional ceiling. If one app tends to take the whole budget, cap how much of it that app may use, for example 50 minutes a day with at most 20 on TikTok. A ceiling limits one app's share of the budget and does not add minutes. • Down hours. Set one nightly window. During it no unlock is granted, and Silk switches to its night colours. • You type a sentence or use the keyboard's dictation key. Both spend from the same budget. • Tightening a rule takes effect immediately. Loosening one (a bigger budget, a shorter night, a removed ceiling) is held until the next day. The held rule carries a button that applies it today. The blocked app's own screen does not offer that button. Removing an app from Silk takes it off the block list at once, at any hour. NOW AND MIRROR Now shows the minutes left today, drawn as a circle whose length is the budget. Spent time is blank. Mirror shows the score for the last completed day under that day's name, with the past week as six shades of one colour, darker for a better day. Silk does not estimate time saved, because it has no way to measure it. WHAT SILK DOES NOT DO • It sends no notifications and does not ask for notification permission. • It keeps no streaks and has no leaderboard and no mascot. • During down hours a blocked app's screen shows the time down hours end; with the budget spent it says Open Silk. Either way there is one OK button and no chat and no coach. Silk only takes a number of minutes. • It is free, and the blocking does not depend on payment. PRIVACY Silk records what it granted and when a blocked app's screen appeared. It does not read your usage. Apple keeps per-app usage data away from third-party apps. To lock an app again, Silk asks iOS to signal when the app has been used for the minutes granted; iOS keeps the count, and Silk never sees it. The numbers Silk shows are computed from that record, kept on this iPhone. Nothing leaves the device. Silk has no server and no accounts. WHAT SILK DOES NOT INCLUDE There is one block list. There are no location rules, no per-app schedules, no habit tracker, no meditation timer, and no feed. Silk is not a rule engine. A per-app ceiling is the one extra limit. It is still one budget: the ceiling limits what a single app may draw from it and adds no minutes of its own. iPhone only. Screen Time blocking does not extend to an iPad or a computer. English only at launch. Requires iOS 26.5 or later and Screen Time permission.