Being present with your family, not just in the room
This one is different from the others because there is no productivity argument to make. Nothing is being optimised. You are not going to get more done.
It is also the one where the cost of failure is least recoverable. A distracted working hour is an hour. A distracted decade of dinners is something else.
What to block, and where the key goes
Four decisions. The last one is the mechanism rather than a flourish: unlocking means holding your phone against the key, so put it somewhere you have to walk to.
Three apps, not thirty
You almost certainly know which two or three actually take you out of the room. Blocking an exhaustive list makes the mode feel like a punishment and you will stop using it. Block the ones that matter and leave the rest.
Attach it to something that already happens
The kettle going on, sitting down to eat, the school pickup, walking through the front door. A block that depends on you remembering is a block that happens on good days only.
Put the phone out of sight, not just face-down
Face-down on the table is the usual compromise, and it is a weak one. In one published study, a phone that was merely visible during a conversation lowered the closeness and trust the two people reported — nobody had to pick it up for it to cost something. It is a single study, so hold it loosely; the practical point stands without it.
If the phone has to stay, send the key away instead
Some evenings the phone genuinely has to be on the table: someone is expecting a call, or it is the only camera in the house. That is the case the key is for. Leave it in a bedroom drawer on the other side of the flat and the phone on the table can ring, take a photo and open none of the apps you blocked until you have walked the length of the house and held it against the key. Putting the key in the drawer in front of people is also a different act from silencing a phone in your pocket, and it is received differently — this is the one use case where the social signal is doing as much work as the block.
Related reading
The failure mode: the quick check that is genuinely quick
You look up something factual mid-conversation — a date, a name, whether the shop is open. It takes eleven seconds and it is entirely reasonable, and then you are in the phone, and the conversation has moved on without you. The eleven-second check is the main route back in, and the only reliable defence is that the phone is not in the room to be quickly checked. Write the question down and look it up later; almost none of them survive the wait.
Everyone else is on their phone anyway. Does mine matter?
Probably more than it looks, and this is the one situation where going first is the whole intervention. The honest answer is that we cannot promise it changes anyone else's behaviour — but a phone that is not on the table cannot be the reason a conversation stops, and that much is within your control alone.
Questions about family time
Does having a phone on the table really affect conversation?
One published experiment suggests so: pairs of strangers who talked with a phone in view reported lower closeness, trust and relationship quality than pairs without one, and the phone was never touched. It is one study rather than a settled finding, and it is linked from our research page.
How do I get my family to put their phones away too?
Not by asking during dinner. The most you can do is go first — visibly and without commentary — for long enough that it stops being a statement. We would rather say that plainly than pretend a product solves a family negotiation.
Can I still keep calls available?
Yes — calls always get through a block, whatever else is on the list. The point is to remove the feeds that pull you out of the room, not to be unreachable to a school or a hospital.
What age is this appropriate for?
It is built for adults choosing it for themselves. On a teenager's phone it becomes a thing done to them, and a blocker installed against somebody's will turns into a game of removal they will eventually win on their own device. If you are buying for a household, buy one each and use yours first.
Does one key work for a whole family?
No. Each key belongs to one account, and an account has one active phone at a time — so it is one key per person. The keys can share a shelf, though: a row of them by the kitchen door has the useful side effect of making each walk a public act rather than a private one.
Four more, each set up differently
Blocking distracting apps for deep work
Block distracting apps during work for two hours: which feeds and inboxes to block, which work apps to keep, and where the key goes so the session holds.
Read the setupStudyingBlocking your phone while studying
Study sessions fail differently: the phone is also your notes, your timer and your group chat. A setup that survives a long revision block.
Read the setupSleepGetting your phone out of the bedroom
How to stop using your phone before bed, when self-control is lowest: start the block an hour early, solve the alarm, and keep the key out of the bedroom.
Read the setupTrainingBlocking your phone at the gym and on runs
At the gym the phone has a real job — music, a timer, your log — and still eats the rest between sets. What to block, what to keep, and where the key goes.
Read the setupIf what you want is the method rather than the situation, the guides go deeper, and how it works covers the part that makes all of this hold — unlocking means holding your phone against the key, so where you leave it is the whole design. Where these pages lean on a study, it is cited, with its caveats, on the research page.
Last updated 13 Sept 2026
A mode you configure once and stop thinking about.
Locking is one tap and never needs the key. Unlocking means walking to wherever you decided to leave it, back when you were thinking clearly, and holding your phone against it. The app is free; the key is the one-time buy.