How to block apps while studying, on Android and iPhone

This is the practical how-to. If you are preparing for a specific exam, the guides for JEE and NEET, UPSC, CAT and boards cover how to plan a whole year around your phone; this page is just the setup, done properly, in one sitting.

What to block, and what to keep

YouTube is the hard one, because your lectures live in the same app as the feed designed to keep you there. On Android you can block Shorts and leave lectures playing; on iPhone, blocking works on whole apps, so the workable setup is lectures on a laptop and YouTube blocked on the phone.

On Android: Focus mode, on a schedule

1. Open Settings and find Digital Wellbeing & parental controls. (The exact name and place vary by manufacturer — search Settings for “Focus” if it is not where you expect.)
2. Open Focus mode and select the apps to pause: everything in the left column above.
3. Set a schedule for your study hours — for example 7 to 9 p.m. on weekdays — so it starts without you deciding each evening.
4. Optionally, add App timers for the apps you use in moderation, so they close for the day when the timer runs out.

What it does well: it is free, built in, and pauses whole apps on a schedule. Where it gives way: Focus mode has a Take a break button, and an app timer can be deleted in a few taps. That is the moment most students lose — tired, at 9 p.m., with a reason.

On iPhone: Downtime and Always Allowed

1. Open Settings → Screen Time and turn on Downtime (called Screen Time Schedule on iOS 27).
2. Set it to a schedule matching your study hours.
3. Open Always Allowed and add the apps you need: notes, calculator, dictionary, your lecture app. Calls stay available.
4. Turn on a Screen Time passcode — and if you know you will override it, have someone else set the code.

Apple's own documentation is candid about the weakness: by default a limit can be ignored once reached, and Block at Downtime only holds with a passcode set. A passcode you set yourself can be reset with your Apple Account. With a parent or friend holding it, Downtime becomes genuinely strong.

When the free setup stops working

Almost every student who tries this finds the same thing in the first week: the block is fine at 7 p.m. and gone by 9, because the off switch is on the phone and the student is tired. That is not a willpower failure. It is a design flaw in every blocker whose exit sits on the device it is policing.

The fix is to move the exit. On iPhone, that is someone else holding the Screen Time passcode. With Spark, it is a physical key: you lock your study mode with one tap or on a schedule, and ending it early means walking to wherever you left the key — another room, a hostel friend's floor, the kitchen — and holding your phone against it. On Android, Spark's Study mode can also allow only the YouTube channels you study from and block Shorts. The app is free, the key is bought once, and calls always get through.