Spark vs Apple Screen Time

We would rather say this plainly than sell around it: if you have not yet used Screen Time with Block at Downtime turned on, do that before buying anything from anyone. It is free, already on your phone, needs no third-party app to be granted permissions, and it is enough for a great many people.

It is also the correct tool for a child's device, because Family Sharing already puts the passcode with the parent — the same someone-else-holds-the-key property, arriving from the other direction.

Where it breaks is the adult using it on themselves. Every route back in is a feature Apple built deliberately, and reasonably: a limit that could genuinely trap you out of your own phone would be dangerous. So the limit is advisory to the one person it is meant to restrain, and no amount of tightening the settings changes who holds the key.

That leaves two honest options. Hand the passcode to somebody you trust, which works and costs nothing, and requires them to be available when you need it changed. Or move the credential out of the phone entirely, so the block depends on where an object is rather than what you decide at 11pm. Spark is the second option, and the app that does it is free — the key is the only thing you buy.