Warden
What ScreenZen offers
ScreenZen offers daily limits and scheduled blocks for selected apps and websites, and its site describes a lock mode intended to make limits harder to bypass. The app is free with optional donations, and the company sells a separate device called halo. Its website lists iOS, macOS, Windows and Android.
If it is working, keep it. The alternatives below make sense when a specific part of your plan keeps breaking.
Reference: ScreenZen
If you want another person involved
A lock you set for yourself is still yours to work around. Warden lets you connect a trusted person, your Warden, who approves early access for the rules you choose, or use Lockdown to prevent ordinary early unlocks and edits to active rules until the block ends.
Warden supports iPhone and iPad, includes a free plan, and keeps emergency access available.
If you want structured focus sessions
Opal describes Focus Rules, a Focus Timer, an Opal Score and milestone rewards, with a Deep Focus option that restricts ending a session early, on iPhone, Mac and Android.
Jomo describes blocks at set times, after a limit or until you complete an action, with different block strengths, on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Reference: Opal
Reference: Jomo
If you want the stopping point off the phone
Brick uses a physical device: you choose apps and start a session by tapping your phone against it. Its site lists iOS and Android support, a strict option and emergency unbricks.
Freedom stays in software but covers supported phones and computers, with recurring schedules and a Locked Mode for running sessions.
Reference: Brick
Reference: Freedom
If you only want a pause, or nothing new
one sec describes a breathing pause and other actions before a selected app opens, plus scheduled blocking.
Apple Screen Time is already on your iPhone, with schedules and allowances, if you would rather not add an app at all.
Reference: one sec
Example: the lock holds, the evenings do not
Your ScreenZen limits hold during the day, but at 9 PM you change a setting and carry on. The lock mode is not the issue; being the only person involved is. Keep ScreenZen for daytime limits and try a single evening rule where a friend approves any early unlock for a week.
At the end of the week, count the evenings the rule held and the requests you actually sent. Together they tell you whether a second person helped.
