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An app blocker for students, with the unlock in another room.
Spark is an app blocker for students: a free app, with no subscription, that locks the apps you choose with one tap, and a key you buy once. Unlocking means fetching the key, so leave it with a roommate, in a locker or in the next room, and you decide about your phone once, before you sit down, instead of every time a chapter gets hard.
Decide before you sit down. Lock with one tap. Leave the key somewhere you would have to stand up for.
Willpower fails at exactly the wrong moment
Nobody loses an evening at the start of a session. You lose it at the point the material stops making sense — the derivation that will not come out, the case law that refuses to stay in your head, the paper you have already failed twice. That is the moment your hand reaches for the phone, and it is not really about the phone. It is about wanting to be somewhere other than the difficult bit.
Which means the plan cannot be “try harder at 11pm”. Anything you can undo in the four seconds it takes to feel stuck will get undone exactly then. The only thing that survives is a decision made earlier, by a version of you who was thinking clearly, with a cost attached that your tired self cannot pay from the chair.
That is the whole mechanism. Locking is one tap in the app, or a schedule, and never needs the key, so there is never a reason to hesitate before starting a session. Unlocking means holding your phone against the key for about fifteen seconds (with the NFC Spark, a tap) — so the walk between you and the key is the entire product. There is published evidence that a phone’s mere presence occupies attention even when it is face-down and switched off; the studies are on the research page, and they are other people’s data, not ours.
What a study mode looks like
Short-form video first, then feeds and the group chat, with the tools you revise with left open. Calls get through whatever you choose.
For one sitting: block video and feeds, keep what you revise with, and lock for a real sitting rather than the whole day. The full method is on how to stop using your phone while studying.
For a preparation measured in months — UPSC, JEE, NEET, CAT, GATE or CA — the batch group chat, lectures that live on YouTube and the week after a bad mock are covered in a phone setup for a whole JEE or NEET year. UPSC, where the newspaper, the PDFs and the Telegram notes live on the same phone as everything you are avoiding, has its own guide.
Which Spark key suits a budget phone
There are two, and only one of them can be the wrong choice for your phone. Either way it is one payment and the app is free; an account uses one kind of key.
Spark Bluetooth key
iPhone on iOS 17+ · Android 12+
A CR2032 coin cell from any shop, so there is nothing to charge. Unlocking means holding your phone against it for about fifteen seconds. If you are not sure what your phone has, this is the one to choose.
Spark NFC key
A supported phone with NFC
A little cheaper, with no battery at all, and unlocking is a tap. But many budget Android phones have no NFC reader, so confirm yours does before you choose it — when you pick this key, the buy page offers a check you can run on the phone itself.
The live price of each is on pricing, and you choose between them on the buy page. Not sure whether your phone has an NFC reader? Here is how to check.
Far enough that you have to stand up
This is the part people get wrong. Nothing locks or unlocks by distance — unlocking means holding your phone against the key — so what a placement decides is the walk. If you can reach the key without getting up, you have not actually left it anywhere.
Another person beats another room, because getting it back costs a small social moment as well as a walk. If they are out, the common room, the far end of the corridor or a locker will do — the test is whether getting it back means standing up and walking.
Unlocking means holding your phone against the key for about fifteen seconds, so the only thing a placement decides is how far you have to walk. A shelf you can reach from your chair is not a placement; the next room, or a hook by the front door, is.
Reading rooms that make you leave your bag at the counter are doing half the job already: put the key in the bag, not your pocket. Or leave it at home, and the block lasts until you are back — which is the point of going. Anything you need while you are out, like a payment app, simply stays off the block list.
Emergency unlocks exist for a reason
If a group project blows up at midnight and the key is three floors away — or the key goes missing the week before an exam — you have five emergency unlocks: five for good, not five a month, which is exactly the point, because a cost that can be paid forever is not a cost. Calls get through regardless. One catch: Strict mode, an Android option, hides the emergency unlocks, so with Strict mode on the key is the only way to end a session. Think twice about Strict mode in the weeks before an exam.
The battery is the same story. The Bluetooth Spark takes a CR2032 coin cell from any shop, so there is nothing to charge; if it dies mid-session, an emergency unlock is your way out — or, with Strict mode on, a fresh pair of cells in the key, because then the key is the only way out. The NFC Spark has no battery at all. The full account is on how emergency unlocks work.
What the Spark app blocker costs a student
The app is free, with no subscription. The key is the only thing you pay for, and you pay for it once — nothing renews at the start of term, and nothing stops working at the end of it.
There is no student discount: no student price and no student code. What applies to everyone is volume pricing — several keys in one basket cost less each, so friends who order together pay less per key, and each of you pairs your own key to your own account.
Prices are quoted before GST, which is added at checkout, and shipping is free to most of India. The live figures for both keys are on pricing.
The three that matter most here
Blocking your phone while studying
The full method for one sitting: what to block, how long to lock for, and why the phone should not also be your timer.
Read the setupGuideA phone setup for a whole exam year
For JEE, NEET and other long preparations: the batch group chat, lectures on YouTube, and the week after a bad mock.
Read the guideGuideWhy app blockers stop working after a week
The failure every software blocker shares, and what has to be true of a limit for it to still be there in month three.
Read the guideAlso for students: studying from YouTube without the feed, focusing in a shared hostel room, a detox that survives a timetable and your hours before the exam.
Setting it up on your own phone: block apps on Android or block apps on iPhone — both walk through the free built-in options first, including the ones that need no purchase at all.
The ones students actually ask
Is there a student discount?
No. There is no student price and no student code today, and we would rather say so than run a page that implies one and a checkout that refuses it. The app is free with no subscription; the key is the only thing you pay for, once. There is no free trial to run first, though — the app only starts locking once a Spark is paired — so if you want to test the habit before buying anything, the free blockers built into your phone are the place to start.
I share a room. Where does the key go?
Hand it to whoever you share with, or to a study partner on another floor. That works better than any hiding place, because getting it back involves asking somebody. If you are on your own, anywhere you would have to get up and walk to — a locker, the far end of a corridor, a bag left at a reading-room desk. Sharing a room does not mean sharing a key, though: a Spark pairs to one account, so a roommate who wants the same setup needs a key and an account of their own.
Does it need internet, an account, or my college email?
A free account and internet, once, to pair your key — no college email. After that, locking and unlocking work offline, so a hostel Wi-Fi outage cannot lock you out. Signing in is also what lets your modes and schedules come back on a new phone; an account is active on one phone at a time.
What if I need my phone in the middle of a locked session?
Calls always get through, whatever the mode. Beyond that you walk to the key, or spend one of your five emergency unlocks. Five is for life, not per month — they do not refill, because a cost that can be paid forever is not a cost. If you turn on Strict mode, an Android option, the emergency unlocks are hidden and the key is the only way out of a session.
Which key should I get on a budget phone?
The Bluetooth Spark, unless you know your phone has an NFC reader. The Bluetooth key works with any iPhone on iOS 17 or later and any Android phone on Android 12 or later; it runs on a CR2032 coin cell, so there is nothing to charge, and unlocking means holding your phone against it for about fifteen seconds. The NFC Spark is a little cheaper and has no battery, and unlocking is a tap — but it needs a phone with an NFC reader, which many budget Android phones do not have. Confirm yours has one before you choose it; an account uses one kind of key.
Will this stop me failing to revise?
No, and anything that claims otherwise is selling you something. It puts a walk between you and the feed, and it makes the decision about what you are allowed to check get made once, at the start, instead of forty times an evening. Whether you open the book is still yours.
Put the key where you have to stand up for it.
The app is free with no subscription, and it starts locking once your Spark is paired. Build one study mode, lock it when you sit down, and hand the key to your roommate. The key is one payment — GST invoice on request, free shipping to most of India.