PHANTOM FOCUS · iOS
Your feeds get one daily budget.
When it runs out, they lock.
A screen time blocker with teeth. One shared pool of minutes for every distracting app — and when it’s spent, getting back in costs a hold that gets longer every time.
Three rules. No loopholes.
One pool for everything
Pick the apps that eat your day. They share a single daily budget — 15 to 120 minutes. No per-app allowances to game. Resets at midnight.
Spent means locked
The moment the budget dies, a shield covers every guarded app at once — with the day’s damage written on it: “Time wasted: 1h 43m”.
Minutes are earned
Want back in? Hold the ring: 10 seconds for the first unlock, 20 for the second, 30 after that. Every extra minute is a decision, not a reflex.
Feel the friction.
This is the actual challenge from the app, with the actual copy. Three seconds here — up to thirty on your phone.
“Stop. What were you reaching for?”
The urge passes. The wall stays.
There is no instant off-switch. Turning protection off, removing an app, raising your budget — every escape starts a cancellable 5-minute cooling-off. Long enough for the impulse to die. Cancel is always free.
A streak that tells the truth
Your first slip of the day is free — a tactical intermission, not a failure. The second one burns the streak to day one. And a day with two breaches never counts: you can’t farm a streak by failing daily.
DATA NOT COLLECTED
We can’t see your data. Nobody can.
Phantom Focus runs entirely on Apple’s Screen Time framework. No accounts, no analytics, no network calls — the app literally cannot phone home. Even the list of apps you guard is opaque to us by Apple’s design.
Read the full privacy policy →Questions, answered.
Install Phantom Focus, grant the Screen Time permission, pick the apps that eat your day, and set one shared daily time limit. When the budget runs out, every guarded app locks behind a shield at once — no per-app loopholes to game.
Instead of soft reminders, it uses a hard daily budget and real friction: once your minutes are spent, getting more costs an escalating press-and-hold challenge — 10 seconds for the first unlock, 20 for the second, 30 after that. Extra scrolling becomes a conscious purchase, not a reflex.
Yes — that's the point. Hold the challenge ring, then choose how many minutes you actually need (1–15). The price grows with every unlock, and the second one burns your daily streak, so cheap impulses stay expensive.
Apple's limits come with a free 'Ignore Limit' button, so they're suggestions. Phantom Focus has no instant off-switch: disabling protection, removing an app, or raising your budget starts a cancellable 5-minute cooling-off — long enough for the urge to pass.
Yes. No subscription, no ads, no account. Download it, pick your apps, set a budget, done.
No — nobody does. It runs entirely on Apple's Screen Time framework: your app choices are opaque tokens only iOS can read, nothing leaves your device, and the app has no network access at all. The App Store label says it plainly: Data Not Collected.