How to block apps at night with a schedule

· 4 min read

In Offhours, a block for the night is a schedule you make yourself. Offhours is still in development, so these steps describe the app as it is being built.

Make the schedule

  1. Open the Blocks tab and tap New beside Schedules.
  2. Tap the days. Monday to Friday start selected. The days you select are the days the block starts, so for nights before work or school, turn Sunday on and Friday off. Thursday’s block ends on Friday morning.
  3. Under Apps return, choose At a time for now.
  4. Set Starts to 22:00 and Ends to 06:00. Times move in five-minute steps, and a schedule has to be at least 15 minutes long. Crossing midnight is fine. Tap Continue.
  5. Tap Choose apps (Choose other apps if you have saved lists), pick them in Apple’s picker and tap Done, then tap Continue.
  6. Keep the suggested name or type your own, then tap Create schedule.

Offhours is built so that iOS wakes it the first time you use your iPhone after 22:00 to apply the block, even if you haven’t opened the app that day. If you have allowed notifications, Offhours warns you 15 minutes before a schedule starts. You can change this under Before a schedule starts and Alert time in Settings, under Notifications.

How apps return in the morning

At a time returns your apps at a set time, here 06:00. The other two options use tasks and are part of Offhours Pro.

After tasks returns your apps as soon as tasks are done. The block starts at 22:00 and has no end time, so finishing your last task at 22:10 brings the apps back at 22:10. This option suits a block that begins in the morning better than one that begins at night.

Both returns your apps after a set time and tasks are done, whichever comes later. The second time now reads Earliest return. If you finish at 05:50, apps return at 06:00. If you finish at 07:15, they return at 07:15. If you want tasks to hold your apps in the morning, this is usually the one to pick.

A schedule’s tasks

Tap the Tasks tile. Filling a glass of water, making your bed and stepping outside for daylight start chosen, and three is the most you can have, so turn one off before choosing another. You keep one list of chosen tasks, and every block that waits on tasks uses the same list.

Choose tasks you can do where you wake up, at the hour you wake up. Filling a glass of water works at 06:00 at home. Reaching 1,000 steps may not, unless you walk before you need your phone. A photo taken in a dark room can come back unclear, so turn on a light.

A task counts only if you finish it after that night’s block started. A task done at 20:00 doesn’t count for the next morning. One done at 23:00 does.

If you never finish, the wait ends at the schedule’s next start or one day after its end time, whichever comes first. With After tasks, which has no end time, it is one day after the start. On a Sunday-to-Thursday schedule, an unfinished Monday morning runs straight into Monday night’s block at 22:00. An unfinished Friday lets go on Saturday at 06:00.

Important apps

Open Blocks, then Important apps under App access. Apps on that list stay available during every block, so the choice applies to more than this schedule.

Go through your night and early morning before you rely on the block. You might need a maps app for an early drive, a transit ticket, the code generator for a work login, or the app that runs a baby monitor. If you block a whole category, an Important app inside it stays available.

Lock

Without Lock, you can open the schedule in Blocks and switch it off, change it or delete it at any time, 23:40 included.

With Lock on (Pro), you can’t stop, reschedule or delete it while it is running. Before 22:00 you can still change it. The schedule’s page says when changes are available again, for example “Changes available after 06:00 and the tasks.” While a locked block is running you can’t change Important apps either. End Zen early doesn’t help here, because it ends Zen and nothing else.

Run a new schedule for a week or two without Lock. You will find out what you forgot to put in Important apps while you can still fix it.

What isn’t confirmed yet

No schedule has yet been verified firing on a physical iPhone, so everything above is what the app is built to do. It relies on iOS waking an Offhours extension at the schedule’s start and end. One developer reported on Apple’s forums that this stopped working for their app on iOS 17. In case a wake-up is missed, Offhours applies its blocks again each time you open it. Apple also says the system doesn’t guarantee that settings an app makes will govern the device.

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