Pause
A soft speed bump.
Twenty seconds of guided breathing — four in, six out, about six breaths a minute. Then the door opens.
Screen Time, rethought
Stop. Rechoose. Move on.
Most blockers make you wait. Waiting can be sat out with the phone face down, and the fortieth interruption of the day costs exactly what the first one did. ZenLock asks for something you have to actually do.
Coming to the App Store iPhone · iOS 18 or later
The moment
The impulse lasts about a second. That is where the app lives.
You already know you are on your phone too much. Knowing is not the problem — the gap between reaching for it and realising you reached for it is. ZenLock stands in that gap and asks you to choose again, while you still can.
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An obstacle, not a wall
Every shield has a way out, and the way out is always the loudest control on screen. A lock you cannot open is a lock you uninstall.
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A reminder, never a punishment
Nothing scolds you. There is no streak to break, no score to protect, no notification telling you that you failed.
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Decide while you are calm
You set the rules in a quiet moment. The impulsive version of you only gets to execute them.
Three difficulties
You choose what standing in the way is worth.
Per rule, per app group, per hour of the day.
Commit
Draw the circle first.
One unbroken brush stroke around an ensō. Your finger has to keep moving, so it cannot be waited out — and then you name how long the break is and own it.
Deep Lock
Your most serious promise.
For the hours you have decided are not negotiable. An emergency exit exists and is always reachable; every use of it is written down, for you and nobody else.
The one stroke
The pacing is physics, not a rule.
The brush lays ink at a fixed rate. Move faster than that and it runs dry: the line thins, breaks, and streaks. Nothing stops you slashing through in a second — you simply get a thin, ragged circle, and you can see it.
There is no gate, no timer, and not one word of commentary. The app measures how the stroke was drawn and shows you none of it, because the moment it starts grading you the whole thing turns into judgement and stops working.
A fully inked sweep runs about four seconds — one slow exhale. An ensō is drawn in a single breath.
Privacy
No servers. No accounts. No analytics.
There is nothing to log in to, because there is nowhere to log in. ZenLock makes no network requests at all and carries no third-party SDKs. Your rules, your schedule and your history stay on your device.
Apple's Screen Time framework never hands the app the names of the apps you picked — only opaque tokens that mean nothing off your phone. So even if there were a server, there would be nothing worth sending to it.