How to block distractions on your laptop and your phone at the same time

Block your phone properly and a common thing happens: the laptop becomes the phone. The same feeds, in a browser tab, one click from the assignment. A second device is the most reliable way round any single-device blocker — which is why the strictest desktop tools say plainly they cannot help with it.

The options

Freedom: one session, every device

Freedom's defining feature is that sessions are run from its servers and reach every device you are signed in on, so one schedule blocks the same sites on your laptop and your phone. That is exactly what this question asks for. The honest limits: its Locked Mode has to be armed on each device separately, it has a once-a-week escape, and on iPhone it depends on a Screen Time permission you can revoke in Settings.

Cold Turkey: the laptop half, done hard

On a Windows or Mac laptop, Cold Turkey is the strictest thing available. A locked block cannot be ended early — no emergency pass, no support override — and its Block Strictness setting closes known workarounds such as the task manager, the system clock and macOS's Screen Time settings. It does not run on phones at all; the vendor says mobile is unsupported because of operating-system limits. That makes it a natural partner for a phone blocker rather than a replacement.

Apple Screen Time, if everything is Apple

Screen Time is built into iOS, iPadOS and macOS, so an all-Apple setup can limit the same apps on a Mac and an iPhone without installing anything. It shares Screen Time's usual weakness on both: a passcode you set yourself can be reset with your Apple Account. Hand the passcode to someone else and it becomes much stronger across every device at once.

A browser extension, for the YouTube problem

If you study from lectures on a laptop, an extension that rewrites YouTube is the cleanest tool of all. Unhook, free on the Chrome Web Store, can hide Shorts, recommendations and comments, turning YouTube into something close to a lecture player. It lives in one browser on one machine, which is fine: on a laptop you are usually already working.

The pairing that works for most people

1. Do the work on the laptop, with an extension on YouTube and a desktop blocker on the rest.
2. Put the phone out of reach during the same hours, with its own blocker on a schedule.
3. Make at least one of the two exits cost something: a passcode someone else holds, or a physical unlock in another room.

Spark handles the phone half: locking is one tap or a schedule, and ending a session early means walking to a physical key. It does not cover laptops today, so pair it with Cold Turkey or Freedom on the computer. The two halves are stronger together than either tool is trying to do both.