Screen Limiter / Compare / Best apps

The best screen time apps for iPhone, sorted by the problem you have

Last updated November 2026

A disclosure before anything else: we built one of the apps on this list. So this is not a ranking, and ours is not first. It is sorted by failure mode, because there is no best screen time app — only a decent match for the way your particular habit misbehaves.

Start with the one you already have: Apple Screen Time

Before installing anything, try what the phone does by itself. App Limits put a daily cap on an app or a category. Downtime schedules quiet hours. A Screen Time passcode stops you editing it in a weak moment. All of it is free, and for a lot of people it is genuinely enough.

Its two weaknesses are structural. Every limit is daily, so one groggy morning scroll can spend the entire budget before you are dressed. And the blocked screen carries a bypass, which turns the limit into a suggestion the first time you are in a hurry.

If you open apps without deciding to: one sec

one sec is the sharpest answer to the reflexive open. You reach for Instagram and a breathing pause appears before the feed does. It is also the only app in this category with a peer-reviewed study behind it, and it reports a large drop in app openings.

What it does not do is ration anything once you are through the pause. There is no budget and no ceiling — the intervention happens at the door, not inside the room. Free for one app, with a modest Pro upgrade.

If the budget is the problem: ScreenZen

ScreenZen is donation-supported and has no subscription, which makes it the easiest recommendation to hand to a friend. It stacks delays, reflective prompts, daily goals, open limits and strict blocks, and it runs on iOS, macOS, Windows and Android.

The flexibility is also the softness: with this many settings, skipping past your own rules on a low-willpower day stays easy.

If your day is shaped like blocks: Opal, Freedom, Jomo

Opal is the most complete product in the category — daily limits, schedules, sessions, a hard difficulty with no unblocks, dashboards and scores — across iPhone, Mac and Android. It also needs an account and costs the most. If you want protected deep-work blocks and app-free evenings, it is the strongest tool for that.

Freedom does one thing very well: a session that blocks apps and websites across every device you own, started by you or by a schedule. It is cross-platform, account-based, and it does not meter time inside a session.

Jomo is the middle path — blocking by schedule, by lock, or by a daily time budget, with an unusually long menu of friction (wait, type, justify, scan a code). Daily accounting, optional account.

If your limit dies by 9am: Precursor and Screen Limiter

This is the category we are part of, so weigh it accordingly. Instead of one budget for the day, an hourly style allowance gives you a few minutes, blocks the app when they are spent, and hands the minutes back at the next boundary — automatically, all day.

Precursor got there first and does it cleanly: an allowance per hour, three strictness levels, a passcode, Parent Mode, and no account. If hourly limits are exactly what you want, it is a fair choice and the app has the longer track record.

Screen Limiter is the same idea with a different dial: you choose a 30-minute, hourly or two-hour window per group, allowances up to 30 minutes, and no analytics of any kind. It is free while in preview. The head-to-head lists where each one is the better buy.

If you are setting it up for someone else

Parent Mode in Precursor and Screen Limiter lets one person hold the passcode while another uses the phone, with a security question instead of a reset timer. Opal offers parental controls through the Screen Time passcode. None of these are surveillance tools — they lock settings, not the person — and all of them are defeatable by deleting the app, which is worth knowing before you count on one.

At a glance

From each app's public listing and docs, November 2026. Tiers rather than prices, because they move and because several apps quote different numbers on different pages.

FAQ

What is the best free screen time app?

ScreenZen, by a distance: donation-supported, no subscription, and genuinely capable. Apple's built-in Screen Time is also free and worth trying before anything else. Screen Limiter is free while it is in preview.

What is the best app to stop doomscrolling?

Match the tool to the habit. Reflexive opens suit one sec. Long sits you fall into suit a budget — Precursor or Screen Limiter if you want the budget to come back hourly, Opal or Jomo if you prefer one daily number. Constant checking suits ScreenZen's open limits.

Is there an iPhone app that limits an app per hour?

Yes, two: Precursor and Screen Limiter. Precursor is built around an hourly allowance. Screen Limiter lets you pick a 30-minute, hourly or two-hour window per group. Apple's own App Limits remain daily and cannot be made to reset hourly.

Do screen time apps actually work?

Partly, and honestly. one sec has the strongest published evidence. Every app in this list fails if bypassing it is trivial, and every one works better when its mechanic matches your failure mode. None of them want the change for you.

Which of these work on Android?

ScreenZen, Opal, Freedom and Jomo do. Apple Screen Time, Precursor and Screen Limiter are iOS only today.