Tempo: Screen Time Blocker
Apps blocked until you move
Free · In‑App Purchases
Screen time isn't something you endure. You earn it.
Tempo locks the apps that eat your time — TikTok, Instagram, games, whatever you choose. There's only one key to reopen them: exercise. Every real minute of activity feeds your screen-time balance. As long as it's positive, all your apps open; using them draws it down minute by minute, and iOS re-locks everything on its own once it's empty — even when Tempo is closed.
No punishment, no guilt. Just a simple trade: you move, you unlock.
HOW IT WORKS
1. Choose the apps to block. Tempo keeps them locked.
2. Work out like you normally do (Apple Watch, Strava, the gym…). Tempo reads your workouts from Apple Health.
3. Open Tempo: your minutes are credited to a single balance. "Workout counted, +28 min."
4. While that balance is positive, all your apps unlock at once — nothing to set up app by app.
5. The time ticks down as you use them; at zero, iOS re-locks everything automatically.
WHAT MAKES TEMPO DIFFERENT
• Exercise is the currency. Other blockers pit your willpower against temptation. Tempo turns effort into a reward.
• One balance, zero micromanaging. No per-app timers to set: you earn, everything opens; you run out, everything closes.
• Every activity counts. Running, walking, cycling, swimming, strength training… weighted by effort. Treadmill walks included.
• Honest anti-cheat. Manually entered workouts in Health are ignored: you have to actually move.
• Tuned to you. Ready-made profiles (Gentle, Balanced, Athletic, Spartan) or fully custom rates.
ON YOUR WRIST (TEMPO PRO)
Your balance lives on your wrist: what's left to spend, what you earned today, the next reward — and your day hour by hour. Turn the crown for your streak of earned days, then your week.
Four complications for your watch face. And one thing your iPhone can't do alone: phone on the table, walk on the wrist. The watch counts those steps and reports them — Tempo keeps the better of the two sensors, never their sum. It's the same walk.
TOTAL PRIVACY
Nothing leaves your iPhone. No account, no server, no ads, no data collected. Your apps, your usage, your health data stay with you. Period.
FREE, WITH PRO IF YOU WANT MORE
Free: the full loop, every sport, unlimited blocked apps and categories, 60 min/day of unlocked time, automatic effort weighting, and your last 7 days.
Tempo Pro: strict mode (loosening a setting waits 24 hours), a daily cap you set yourself, fixed per-sport rates, full history and its curve, weekly recap, widgets — and the Apple Watch app. 7-day free trial.
Screen time is something you earn. Ready to move?
Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Privacy Policy: https://movetempo.app/en/privacy
more What a minute is worth, sport by sport.
The Conversion page no longer shows a single multiplier. Each sport states what
one of its minutes earns you, in screen minutes, and you set it right where you
read it.
Each sport is paid either by a fixed amount or by your heart — never both. Paid
by heart rate, a minute is worth its zone: a hard minute pays far more, an easy
one pays less than your amount. That's the deal, and it's why the choice is made
sport by sport. Go and say which sports you hand to your heart: they no longer
are by default.
HIIT and hiking now have their own amount. Hiking counted as walking, at half
rate; your next ones earn more.
Your profile and what records your workouts have left the Conversion page for
the first settings page: they also drive your bonuses and your cap, and that was
nowhere to be seen. Changing profile now shows everything it moves before you
confirm.
And removing a locked app when you have nothing left to spend goes through a
commitment you have to hold. The next day, your home screen tells you what that
removal cost you in screen time. Nothing is taken back: it's a measurement, not
a punishment.
1.11.0 Sep 23
Your heart rate now counts toward what you earn. When your watch records a
workout, Tempo reads your intensity minute by minute: the time you spend pushing
is worth more than your usual rate, and never less. A new page shows what a
minute earns at each level of effort, your thresholds in beats per minute, and
what your last workout actually gave you. Intensity is part of Tempo Pro —
without it, Tempo still shows you what it would have earned you.
"Your screen days" now says what it is measuring: the period it reads is written
above the numbers, every label names what it counts, and the card opens on your
current week, with your last 28 days next to it. The weekly profile shows each
day from first screen to last, today included — and the end of your day only
enters the averages the next morning.
Strict mode is now sealed by holding your finger down for three seconds: you
don't commit to it by accident. It can also block app deletion — the "Delete
App" button disappears from your home screen for every app, Tempo included, so
uninstalling is no longer the way out.
1.10.0 Sep 10
NEW
Your screen days. What time you pick up your phone in the morning, what time you really put it down at night, how many times you reach for it in between. Measured on the apps you protect, day by day, so you can see whether it's getting better. With Pro: the last 28 days against the 28 before, the weekday you hold out the least, what weekends change.
Three tabs instead of two. Today, Progress — what Tempo changes: workouts into screen time, your days, the week's tally, the curve of earned minutes never spent — and Journal: what happened, dated.
The month calendar. An orange dot for every day that earned, a pale dot for every day that spent, and a day's detail on tap.
The day's detail, on the home screen. The chips in "Your day" now open on what paid for it: "Cycling · 10 min × 1.6 → 16 min", "Steps: 8,250 → +20 min", with the time each batch expires.
The Sunday check-in now carries its preview — minutes earned, times blocked — instead of an empty promise.
Your milestones. A week-long streak, 500 earned minutes never spent, your first full week: Tempo marks them.
Your number. Next to your earned days, how many times you loosened your rules this month. Your number, not a sales pitch.
Rate Tempo. If the app genuinely helps, you can now say so.
FIXES
Health could stop responding without saying a word: workouts stopped counting, and the app looked fine. The home screen now flags it, offers to restore access, and re-reads your workouts right away.
A credited workout could still be followed by "5 min left before apps lock again" when your balance had just gone up. The reminder is now decided against the real balance.
The day card didn't add up when the day opened with a head start: the minutes given at the start of the day are now shown, separate from what you earned.
After "Reset everything", the first workout could be discarded as a duplicate of a workout already paid for.
1.9.0 Sep 2
Tempo on your wrist
The Apple Watch app is here: your balance, your streak, and your week
across three pages you turn with the crown, plus four complications to
keep them on your watch face. The watch also counts the steps your iPhone
misses while it sits in your bag. With Tempo Pro.
Three widgets for your home screen
Spent versus earned, time you didn't spend, current balance. They refresh
without opening the app. With Tempo Pro.
Settings that answer before they offer
Every page opens on what's happening right now — a number, a state —
instead of a list of switches. And the numbers you see are measured, never
estimated.
Your steps are worth what your lane promises
Without a watch or a tracker, your steps are your only currency. They were
being paid at the lowest rate no matter which lane you picked. That's
fixed.
Fewer reasons to open Tempo
The "I walked" button on the blocking screen now reads Health directly,
without going through the app. And time you earn while Tempo is closed
finally tells you — it was the most common case, and the quietest.
Screen time counting has been rebuilt
It could stall mid-session, or charge you for minutes you never spent.
The count was rebuilt from scratch and checked on a real device: what
you're charged matches what you watched, to the minute. And the break that
interrupts a long session now lands when it should.
Also
Picture-in-picture video is no longer free. A workout written by two apps
at once is no longer credited twice. The journal dates your screen time
from when it started, not from when the system reported it. The Pause page
opens on its switch.
1.8.0 Aug 25
You can now lock as many apps as you want, for free.
Until now, the free version stopped at a single app. Which made no sense: when Instagram closes, you open TikTok — and the moment the whole product is built around, the one where there's nothing left to open, never happened. Free Tempo now locks as many apps and categories as you like. You keep your 60 minutes of unlocking per day; Tempo Pro is what sets that cap, or removes it.
The home screen now tells you about your day. It used to answer "how much do I have left?" and nothing else. One card shows the back and forth hour by hour: what you earned going up, what you spent going down, on the same scale on both sides. Another gives you the shortest move to reopen something — "693 steps and you earn 5 min". And your earned days move up to the main screen, with the rule explained on tap: what breaks a streak, and above all what doesn't.
Settings have been rebuilt from scratch. One setting per page, and every page opens on what's happening right now instead of a list of switches: the minutes you have left to unlock, your steps today, your countdown out of strict mode. Those numbers are measured across your last seven days — and where Tempo doesn't know, it stays quiet rather than estimate.
Your log becomes a tab, "Progress", next to "Today". It already held your steps, your workout-to-screen ratio, your earned days and your curve: a grey button in the top corner made none of it visible.
Three new home screen widgets, with Tempo Pro: "Used vs earned" puts both of today's totals on the same scale, "Unspent time" shows the hours you've earned and never spent since day one, and "Last 7 days" gives you the week at a glance.
Strict mode finally shows itself when it holds you back. Change a setting it's holding and you see both numbers straight away — what you asked for, what's in force — and how long until your change takes effect.
The Sunday recap notification is now available to everyone.
Plus a few details that matter: "Daily start" has its own page and tells you what it costs before you turn it on; the locked apps list now counts the ones it isn't showing and lets you remove one with a tap; and the blocking screen names the reason when it's your daily cap holding the door, instead of offering a walk that can't reopen anything before midnight.
1.6.0 Aug 4
Your walking minutes come back to you, even when you never open Tempo.
Until now, walking while your apps were blocked did nothing until you reopened Tempo. You could have taken a thousand steps and still hit the blocking screen: the minutes were earned, they just never showed up.
Now they arrive on their own. Tempo notices your walk in the background and unlocks your apps without you lifting a finger. And if you're already looking at the blocking screen, an "I walked" button collects what you've earned and takes you straight into the app you were trying to open — no detour through the home screen.
Also new on your main screen: a bar showing where your daily bonus stands. How many steps until the next block, or until your goal. In continuous mode it empties at every block you clear, because that's exactly what happens: it starts over.
And when your workouts arrive hours late from your watch, Tempo now says so and names the app that sends them. That delay comes from its syncing, not from Tempo — the screen points you to the setting to check.
A few useful fixes, too. "Reset everything" now asks for confirmation — it's the one action in the app you can't undo. A bonus switched on mid-day now says plainly that it's catching up on your day, instead of looking like minutes out of nowhere. The blocking screen no longer talks about your steps once you've turned off the bonus that counted them. And the step count you see now matches the Health app exactly: it was running high, and the minutes earned with it.
1.5.0 Aug 2
A fix.
Setup could get stuck. When iOS never answered a permission request — Health, Screen Time or notifications — the step just spun: no yes, no no, no error. There was no way forward, and nothing said so. The only cure was restarting your iPhone.
Tempo now gives iOS twenty seconds. After that, the row hands control back and tells you what to do, instead of leaving you with a spinner.
Subscription prices are fixed too: the ones shown while the App Store was still answering were higher than the real ones.
1.4.1 Jul 30
Strict mode: Tempo can no longer be switched off with one tap.
Until now, hitting your daily cap was enough to grant yourself another one: a
quick round trip through settings, and thirty minutes came straight back. The
way out was built in.
With strict mode, tightening the screws takes effect immediately; loosening them
waits 24 hours. Lowering your cap, adding an app, making your pause stricter:
instant. Raising your cap, removing an app, giving yourself a head start: it's
scheduled, and the home screen tells you when. Turning strict mode off included.
Also new: your curve. The time you earned and never spent, day after day — the
one statistic that says whether you actually let go, and the one that grows with
time.
Your stats now survive an uninstall: streaks and history are backed up to your
own iCloud, with no account to create and nothing going through our servers (we don't have any).
Finally, pauses show up in your journal (waited out, or ended by walking), and
when you reach your daily cap, the home screen finally tells you why the door
stays shut.
Strict mode and the curve are part of Tempo Pro. Everything else — earning your
screen time by moving — stays free, and always will.
1.4.0 Jul 29
Pause: something to break up long sessions.
You know the moment — you've earned your screen time, everything is unlocked,
and you look up forty minutes later without knowing how. Tempo can now step in.
Once you've spent the time you choose (10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes) on your locked
apps, Tempo puts a five-minute pause in the way. The time adds up even when you
switch apps: what counts is the session, not the app.
Two ways out: wait, or take around 150 steps. Walking doesn't earn you any
minutes, it just reopens things right away. Moving is the shortcut, waiting is
the normal route.
During a pause, a countdown appears on your Lock Screen, with an "I walked"
button that reopens everything without even opening Tempo.
Your balance is never touched: what you earned stays earned.
The option is off by default. It's waiting for you in Settings, Spend, Pause.
Also in this version: the daily cap now applies in all circumstances,
permission prompts open reliably during setup, and a crash in the pause banner
has been fixed.
1.3.0 Jul 27
This release puts forward the one thing Tempo measures that nobody else does: your discipline.
EARNED DAYS
Your new counter: days, without a break, where every minute of screen time was earned. Not days you worked out — days you never went into the red. A rest day breaks nothing: it pauses the streak.
YOUR STATS
What you earned, what you spent, and above all the minutes you never needed. Plus how many times Tempo held the door while you did something else.
SUNDAY RECAP
Seven days of discipline to look back on, announced by a gentle notification at the end of the week.
MINUTES EARNED ON FOOT
Your steps now credit you without opening the app. A notification tells you what you earned and how far you are from the next block — a single one, updated through the day.
UNSPENT CREDIT
When time you earned expires without being used, that's a win, not a failure. Turn it on in settings.
MORE RELIABLE WIDGETS
Time earned while the app was closed finally shows up, without opening it.
ACCESSIBILITY
Stronger contrast, larger text sizes without truncation, refined VoiceOver.
1.2.0 Jul 23
No Apple Watch? Tempo is made for you too.
• New onboarding: we ask how you track your sport — a watch, an app (Strava, Nike Run Club…) or just your iPhone — and Tempo adapts.
• iPhone only? Your steps become your screen-time currency, on from the very start: you earn time by walking.
• An animated "kickoff" when you open the app.
• More varied messages on the blocking screen to get you moving again.
• Various fixes and refinements.
Enjoy the move !
1.1.0 Jul 21
Fixed a display bug in the remaining time notification when using a locked app
1.0.1 Jul 19
What a minute is worth, sport by sport.
The Conversion page no longer shows a single multiplier. Each sport states what
one of its minutes earns you, in screen minutes, and you set it right where you
read it.
Each sport is paid either by a fixed amount or by your heart — never both. Paid
by heart rate, a minute is worth its zone: a hard minute pays far more, an easy
one pays less than your amount. That's the deal, and it's why the choice is made
sport by sport. Go and say which sports you hand to your heart: they no longer
are by default.
HIIT and hiking now have their own amount. Hiking counted as walking, at half
rate; your next ones earn more.
Your profile and what records your workouts have left the Conversion page for
the first settings page: they also drive your bonuses and your cap, and that was
nowhere to be seen. Changing profile now shows everything it moves before you
confirm.
And removing a locked app when you have nothing left to spend goes through a
commitment you have to hold. The next day, your home screen tells you what that
removal cost you in screen time. Nothing is taken back: it's a measurement, not
a punishment.
more Version 1.11.0 Sep 23
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.