Furlough
Furlough · for Mac

Furlough for Mac.

A separate app, downloaded from here rather than the App Store. The same budgets, windows and Anchor, enforced the Mac's own way — Apple's Screen Time API doesn't exist on macOS.

Download Furlough 1.3.0

A 1.3.0 disk image, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Requires macOS 15.0 or later. Open it and drag Furlough to Applications.

The App Store listing is the iPhone app. It installs on an Apple silicon Mac and blocks nothing there. Apple's Screen Time API — the thing that shields an app on an iPhone — is unavailable on macOS, so the iPhone build launches on a Mac and has nothing to enforce with. This download is the Mac app, and it is the one that works.

Why it isn't on the Mac App Store

To enforce anything on a Mac, Furlough has to do the work Screen Time does on a phone: ask a blocked app to quit, read which site a browser tab is showing, and run a network filter. The Mac App Store requires the App Sandbox without exception, and a sandboxed app can do none of those things. So the Mac build is distributed the other way Apple supports — a Developer ID signature and notarization — from this page.

What macOS will ask you for

Because it does its own enforcing, Furlough needs permissions the iPhone app never has to ask for. macOS will prompt for these, and the app cannot block anything without them:

  • A system extension. The website blocking runs as a network extension, and macOS asks you to allow it in System Settings the first time.
  • Permission to filter network content. The extension is a content filter, so macOS asks separately before it can start.
  • Automation, once per browser. Furlough reads the current tab of each running browser to see whether it is showing a blocked site, and redirects it if it is. macOS asks the first time it talks to Safari, then again for each other browser.

Worth knowing before you install

  • Furlough refuses to quit while anything is shielded — that is the Mac's version of having no unblock button. Logging out, restarting and shutting down are let through.
  • Force Quit is the documented way out, the same way the Screen Time switch is on the iPhone. It is deliberately not a comfortable one: a background agent reopens Furlough shortly afterwards.
  • The Mac app works on its own. It does not need the iPhone app, and the iPhone app does not need it — though the Anchor can be paired across both.

Or build it yourself

Furlough for Mac is open source. If you would rather compile it than trust a download,the source is on GitHub.

Furlough for iPhone, on the App Store · Support · Privacy policy