Merit: Screen Time Blocker

Focus Timer, App Limit Control

Only for iPhone

Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.

iPhone

Blocking and earning from steps stay free. $5.99 once adds exercise, stand hours, sleep, separate profiles, and your history. There's no subscription anywhere in it. $5.99 once. No subscription, ever. Every other app in this category charges you weekly to stay off your phone. One of them wants $10 a week. That's $520 a year to not open Instagram, which is about where the cure starts costing more than the disease. Merit locks the apps you pick. Getting them back costs you something real: walking, moving, standing up, sleeping. HOW EARNING WORKS No "I did it" button. Merit reads your activity out of Apple Health and does the math itself. Nothing to fake. Apps that let you type in your own workout are inviting you to lie to yourself, and plenty of people take them up on it. 1,000 steps = 5 minutes 10 minutes of exercise = 10 minutes Each stand hour = 2 minutes 7 hours of sleep = 15 bonus minutes Spend the credit to open something you blocked. When the time runs out the block comes back by itself. STUDY MODE Blocking Instagram shouldn't take your calculator with it. Merit keeps an allowlist for the things you actually need, and it's free. Every competitor has reviews complaining about this exact problem, so putting it behind a paywall wasn't something I was willing to do. FREE Blocking, the allowlist, earning from your step count. This isn't a trial. It doesn't expire. $5.99 Three more ways to earn: exercise minutes, stand hours, sleep. Separate blocking profiles, because work and Saturday don't need the same rules. And a record of where your screen time actually came from. One payment. Whatever worked before you paid still works after. PRIVACY No account. The apps you pick are stored as opaque tokens that never leave your phone, so I couldn't tell you what you blocked even if you wanted me to. Health data is read-only. One thing does get sent: a few anonymous counters, like how often the app gets opened and how many blocks ran their course. They hang off a random ID. What you blocked is not in there, and could not be. Settings has a switch if you would rather it sent nothing.

Ratings & Reviews

  • This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.

Arabic and Hebrew now lay out right to left. That should have been true from the start. Portuguese (Portugal) and Slovenian bring the app to 35 languages. Plurals are fixed in 18 more — with a single app blocked, several of them were quietly saying it wrong. Japanese, Chinese and Arabic got wording fixes as well. Two new rows in Settings: rate the app, and send feedback with your version and device already filled in. New, and worth knowing about: a switch for anonymous usage counters, on by default. Merit sends how often it gets opened and how many blocks ran their course, tied to a random ID. What you block is not in there and could not be.

Version 1.1

The developer, 岚烜 吴, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

  • Data Not Linked to You

    The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

    • Usage Data

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Accessibility

The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More

Information

Seller
岚烜 吴
Size
3.4 MB
Category
Productivity
Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
  • iPhone
    Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
  • Mac
    Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
  • Apple Vision
    Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
Languages
English and 33 more
  • English, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
Age Rating
9+
In-App Purchases
Yes
Copyright
© 2026 Lanxuan Wu
  • Developer Website
  • Privacy Policy

    • More by 岚烜 吴

    You Might Also Like