An app blocker with no unblock button, and two ways to use it. Rules give an app the hours it is allowed and a daily budget, and only ever loosen after a delay you set in advance. The Anchor locks a list — or the whole phone — and lifts only when you hold the phone to an NFC tag you paired; by default, locking it asks for the same tag, one tap if you turn that off. Either works on its own.
Both are built on Apple's Screen Time API. There is no account, no server and no analytics. Furlough writes off the device only to your own iCloud, and only once you have linked your devices: the Anchor's state, so the Mac and the iPhone lock together, and, if you let it, the names of what you add.
Swift and SwiftUI, no third-party code. Built on FamilyControls, ManagedSettings, DeviceActivity and Core NFC. The three typefaces — Bricolage Grotesque, Onest and Geist Mono — are used under the SIL Open Font License. The Mac app is open source.
What stays on the phone
- Which apps you picked. iOS never tells Furlough. An app is an opaque token that means nothing off this phone; the icon and the name beside it are drawn by iOS itself.
- Your rules, in a container shared by the app and its extensions, so all of them read the same state. Rules never sync and are never uploaded; what goes to your own iCloud, once you link your devices, is the Anchor's state — down or not, since when, until when — the roster of linked devices, and, if you turn it on, the names of what you add, so your other devices can follow.
- Your usage. Screen Time hands the hours to a report extension with no network of its own and nowhere to write. Only the picture reaches the app.
The formal version of all of this is the privacy policy.
Your setup
- Download my setup writes your rules, budgets, tiers and delay to a JSON file you keep. Because a token means nothing elsewhere, the file records what each app is called rather than the app itself. The Anchor is not included.
- Restore from a file asks which app each rule was, since the file cannot say. It is a proposal, not a rewind: every rule goes through the same delay the editor does, so anything that loosens waits.
Both are in the app under Settings › Your setup, along with the version number of the copy you are running — useful if you write in about something.
More: Privacy policy · All help · support@furloughapp.com