The limit screen appears. Your thumb is on Ignore Limit before you’ve decided anything. One more minute. Fifteen more. Ignore for today. You set that limit at 2 p.m. with the best intentions, and at 10 p.m. it lasted about a second.
Why Ignore Limit fails when you set it for yourself
Apple’s Screen Time was designed mostly with parents and children in mind. When a parent holds the passcode, the limit works. When you set a limit for yourself, you’re both the parent and the kid, and the kid knows the code.
So the limit turns into a reminder. People on Apple’s own Community forums describe tapping “Remind me in 15 minutes” again and again until the feature is “basically useless.” Others ask how to stop ignoring time limits they set themselves.
The issue isn’t the limit. It’s that the way past it costs nothing. In a 2026 Pew Research Center survey, 53% of US adults said they spend too much time on their smartphone. Of those who tried to cut back, only a quarter said it went very well. We think a one-tap escape is part of why.
If you’d rather tighten Screen Time itself, our guide to getting rid of Ignore Limit walks through the settings.
What Bricked puts where the Ignore button was
When your daily limit runs out or a schedule starts, the apps you chose turn to brick: Apple’s shield covers them. There is no Ignore Limit, no “one more minute” and no “remind me in 15 minutes.” Here are the exact rules.
| How you unlock | How long it lasts | Does it escalate? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Wait, then unlock | 5 minutes | Yes: no wait, then 30 s, 1 min, 3 min, 5 min |
| Bricked+ | Press and hold | 5 minutes | Yes: 3 s, 5 s, 10 s, 15 s, 30 s, 60 s |
| Strict mode (Bricked+, focus sessions) | You can’t | Until the session ends | Not applicable |
The steps reset each day. Unlocks also have a cost inside the app: the sixth unlock of the day resets the brick tier you’re working toward.
Every unlock is a 5-minute peek
You never unlock “for the rest of the day.” You get five minutes to answer the message, check the event or look up the recipe, and then the brick comes back on its own. If you still need more, you take another unlock, and that one costs more.
The hold gets longer every time
On Bricked+, unlocking means pressing and holding a button until it fills. The first hold of the day is 3 seconds. By the sixth it’s a full minute. Holding a button for 60 seconds while you think about why you’re doing it is a very different experience from a reflexive tap.
On the free plan, you wait
The free plan uses time instead of a hold. Your first unlock of the day has no wait, so a genuine one-off need costs nothing. After that, each unlock asks you to wait longer, up to 5 minutes.
Strict mode: no early exit
Sometimes you don’t want a peek at all. You want two hours where the answer is simply no.
Strict mode is a Bricked+ option for focus sessions you start with Slide to brick. Slide, pick 25 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours or until tonight, turn on strict mode, and the session can’t be ended early. No peek, no hold, no wait. The apps unlock when the timer runs out.
Strict mode is deliberately limited to sessions you start yourself, with a duration you chose. Your daily limit and schedules always keep the hold or wait as a way out, because we think a whole day with no way out is how a blocker ends up deleted.
Why a pause works
The research on this idea is encouraging, with a caveat. In a 2023 study in PNAS, researchers tracked 280 people using one sec, a different app that adds a short pause before a chosen app opens. Over six weeks, actual openings of those apps fell by 57%, and in 36% of attempts people closed the app at the pause instead of continuing. A follow-up experiment found the delay and the option to back out did the work.
Two honest notes. One of the authors founded one sec, and that study measured one sec, not Bricked. We don’t claim its numbers as our results. What it supports is the principle Bricked is built on: a few seconds of friction at the moment of the urge gives the urge a chance to pass.
Can you still delete Bricked?
Yes, and deleting it removes the blocks. That’s on purpose: a blocker that makes each escape cost a few deliberate seconds is one you’re more likely to keep, and our guide to app blockers that can’t be deleted covers iPhone’s built-in options if you want more.
Who strict mode is for
- Good fit: you set limits for yourself, you know your own passcode, and the problem is the reflexive tap at the limit screen.
- Good fit: you study or do deep work in blocks and want a session with no way out, like a phone locked in a drawer.
- Not the right tool: you want a lock that even you can’t remove under any circumstances. No app on an iPhone you control can promise that honestly.
- Not the right tool: you want to block only Reels or Shorts. Apple’s framework blocks whole apps, so Bricked limits Instagram or YouTube as a whole.
For a side-by-side view of the built-in tools, see Bricked vs Apple Screen Time.