Furlough

Furlough is an app blocker with no unblock button, and two ways to use it. Rules give an app the hours it is allowed and a daily budget, and loosen only after a delay you set in advance. The Anchor locks a list, or the whole phone, in one tap, and lifts only when you hold the phone to an NFC tag you paired. Use either on its own. THE ANCHOR One tap and everything on the list is gone. No timer to wait out, no code to type: the only thing that releases it is a physical NFC tag held to the phone. You supply the tag, and any NTAG sticker works. Up to three pair at once, so a key can live wherever you do. Switch its scope and the list turns inside out: every app and website is shielded and the list becomes what stays open. It can drop on a schedule — ten at night on school nights, lifted by the tag in the morning — and it carries to Furlough for Mac, which only your phone's tag will lift. While it is on, neither the list nor the tags can be edited, so no key can be cut from under the lock. RULES Pick the apps and websites that eat your time, from Apple's own picker. Give each a daily budget in minutes and, if you want, the hours it is allowed: eight to ten on school nights, later on weekends, different every day if you like. Outside its hours, or once the budget is spent, iOS shields it until it is due to open again. THE DELAY A shorter window, a smaller budget, a day taken off: those apply the moment you save. A longer window, a bigger budget, removing an app: those wait out a delay you chose beforehand, 24 hours by default. While it waits, a list shows the rule you have now against the one queued to replace it, cancellable until it lands. Each app gets a tier that scales its delay: Essential a quarter of the base, Useful the base, Idle twice, Hazard four times. Moving one toward Essential shortens its future delays, which is itself a loosening, so that waits too. Blocking something you need is warned about by name before you save: a messaging app stops texted codes arriving, an authenticator stops you signing in. With no emergency unblock, that is the last cheap moment to change your mind. THE SHIELD The block screen says which app is closed and when it opens next. That is the whole conversation: no snooze, no code, no one more minute. While anything is shielded, iOS refuses app deletion, so an app cannot be deleted to escape its rule. WEBSITES A site picked from Apple's picker behaves like an app: hours, a daily budget, Furlough's own shield. A site typed in by name goes to the system's web filter instead: hours but no budget, and iOS's block page, not Furlough's. THE WAY OUT There is one, it is Apple's, and it always works: Settings, Screen Time, Apps with Screen Time Access, Furlough, off. It lifts every shield at once. Furlough cannot prevent it and documents it on purpose. Everything else assumes you'd rather not. ALSO IN THE APP A home screen widget that enlarges for StandBy, a Control Center button and a Focus that drop the Anchor, and a Live Activity counting down the open window. Notifications at every edge: a window opening, five minutes before it closes, a budget about to run out, and a weekly digest. A record of streaks and hours shielded. A week of hours drawn on a grid, one app's rule copied onto any number of others, and a clock you cannot set forward to buy time. PRIVACY No account, no server, no analytics, no third-party code. Apple's Screen Time API is built so Furlough is never told which apps you picked. Rules stay on the iPhone that made them; what leaves it, once you link your devices, goes to your own iCloud alone — the Anchor's state, so your Mac locks with it, and the names of what you add if you let it. REQUIREMENTS iPhone, iOS 18 or later. Screen Time access, which iOS grants only to an adult Apple Account. Furlough asks for individual authorization: the person setting the rules and the person kept to them are the same. Not a parental control app.