Furlough
Releases

What changed.

Furlough for iPhone and Mac, newest first

1.3.0

Unreleased

The Anchor learns a schedule on the Mac.

The week is edited where it is drawn now, on the phone and the Mac: drag a window to move it, drag an edge to resize, tap empty track to add one. The iPhone's Anchor has dropped itself on a schedule since the start; the Mac gets the same page. Furlough also runs on iPad now. On the phone, two fixes to the shield that stands in front of a closed app: the square it drew around itself in the App Switcher, and a Close button that came out the system's blue rather than Furlough's.

  • New

    The week is edited on the grid, not a list of pickers

    The grid drew the week beautifully and could not change any of it — tapping a column opened a separate list of pickers, where the actual editing happened. Now it's direct: drag a window to move it inside its day, drag its top or bottom edge to resize, tap empty track to add one, and the sentence under the grid rewrites itself while the block is still under your finger. Identical on the phone and the Mac, because it is now one view.

  • NewMac

    The Anchor can drop itself on a schedule

    A new Schedule row on the Anchor pane sets one or more drop times, each with its own days and its own lift — at a time you choose, or not until the tag. Adding a time takes hold at once; removing or shortening one waits out the usual delay, and can be cancelled from Pending until then. A drop that fell while the Mac was asleep is caught the moment it wakes, the way the phone has always caught one.

  • NewiPhone

    Furlough runs on iPad

    The same portrait layout as the phone, full screen. Split View and Slide Over are not offered yet, since nothing here has been built to handle sharing the screen.

  • FixediPhone

    The shield is a rounded panel in the App Switcher

    It laid Furlough's own ground over the blur behind it. iOS masks that blur to the screen's corners but fills the colour to the square window, so the card in the App Switcher showed a black square around a rounded shield. The tint was all but invisible over that material anyway, and it is gone.

  • FixediPhone

    The shield's Close button is Furlough's colour

    It asked for a faint white fill, which iOS ignored in favour of the default blue — loud, for the one thing there is to do on that screen. The same quiet fill, written as a solid colour, is honoured.

  • Fixed

    What's new stopped claiming every build was TestFlight-only

    The footnote said every version had gone to TestFlight rather than the App Store. Furlough has been on the App Store since 1.2.0, and each version's card already says which channel it shipped through, so the line is gone rather than kept accurate by hand.

  • BetteriPhone

    The anchor's confirmation plays a sound, not just a haptic

    Locking or lifting the anchor already gave a tap the moment it happened, the way a payment confirms. It plays the payment's other half now too — a short tone alongside it. The same setting turns both off.

1.2.0

App Store

Settings became a menu.

Settings was every setting at once, which made the two things people come here to change as hard to find as the five they do not. It is a menu now. Beside it, the last of the two-halves work on the usage screen, and the pass that made it feel as quick as it always was. Most of this went out on 11 September inside the final 1.1 builds; this is that batch given the number it should have had. It also drops the floor to iOS 18 and macOS 15, so a device does not need this year's OS just to install it.

  • BetteriPhone

    Every setting is behind a row

    Seven cards down one scroll became eight rows in three cards, each opening a screen of its own. Every row carries the one fact you would have scrolled to read — what the app opens on, how long a loosening waits, whether the devices are linked, whether anything is wrong — so the screen grows by a row rather than by a screenful.

  • NewiPhone

    The usage step offers the Anchor, not only a schedule

    Where a fortnight went is worth reading whichever half you came for, so the page is the same page either way. What changes is what a card offers to do about an app: hours and a budget if you came for rules, hold it or don't if you came for the Anchor, and both with a choice of where it lands if you asked for both.

  • BetteriPhone

    The Anchor page stands on Home's wall

    Rather than drawing a second one of its own behind it, which showed as a seam where the two pages met.

  • BetteriPhone

    The hourglass glow falls past its page

    The light under the hourglass on Home was clipped to the page it is drawn on. It spills now, the way light does.

  • BetteriPhone

    A busy button keeps its height

    The prominent button used to shrink when its label was replaced by a spinner, so the screen under it jumped at the moment you were watching it most closely.

  • FixediPhone

    Apply stopped spinning for ever

    A Screen Time query that never answers no longer leaves the button turning. It had a deadline first; now it has no wait at all — see “Apply happens when you press it” below.

  • FixediPhone

    Apply happens when you press it

    The suggestions on Where the time went wrote the rule straight away and then sat there spinning, because the button was waiting on a question to Screen Time that the work did not need an answer to. The card is answered in the frame you press it now. Furlough puts the question afterwards, and if anything turns out not to have gone through it says which app and offers it again.

  • BetteriPhone

    The Anchor's button says what it does

    A suggestion bound for the Anchor used to offer “Hold it”, which read as something happening on the spot. It says “Add to the Anchor’s list”, because that is all it does — nothing is out of reach until you drop the anchor.

  • BetteriPhone

    The checklist shows what you picked

    The second step of each setting-up checklist now carries the apps it is about: the ones on your list under Rules, the ones the Anchor holds under the Anchor. Coming back from the usage suggestions, that is where you see they landed.

  • NewiPhone

    Tags can arm the reader on arrival

    Swiping to the Anchor page can now put Apple's scan sheet up the moment it opens, so the tag needs no tap of its own first. Off until you turn it on in Tags — the reader row and the guide's first step still arm it by hand either way.

  • BetteriPhone

    Two setup footnotes came out

    Adding apps no longer adds that websites work too, and pairing a tag no longer suggests where to leave it. Both said less than they cost the step they sat under.

  • FixedMac

    An update no longer switches the web filter off

    A system extension belongs to the copy of Furlough that installed it, so replacing the app with an update — which is how every Mac build lands — left macOS holding the old bundle's copy: activated and enabled by its own account, filtering nothing, with no way for Furlough to tell that apart from a filter nobody had installed yet. Furlough now recognizes its own extension was replaced and reinstalls this build's without being asked.

  • BetteriPhone

    Rules and the Anchor switch from the bottom

    The toggle between them lived in the toolbar as a small pill. It's a floating bar across the bottom of the page now, an icon over a label on each side, with the current half picked out in amber.

  • BetteriPhone

    The hero carousel loops in both directions

    Swiping past the last app on Rules' hero used to stop there, and swiping back past the first did too. Both ends wrap now, forward to the first app and back to the last.

  • NewiPhone

    A second swipe left on the Anchor opens the tag reader

    Anchor sits at the end of the row, so a further swipe had nowhere to go. It now arms Apple's NFC sheet directly, the same one the reader row and the guide's first step already open by hand.

  • FixediPhone

    Furlough can no longer end up in its own shield

    A category rule, or the Anchor set to hold everything except a list, could in principle sweep Furlough in with everything else — locking away the one app that could undo it. Policy.decide now refuses to shield it regardless of how it got there, and the Anchor won't accept it onto its list to begin with.

  • New

    Furlough now installs on iOS 18 and macOS 15, not only this year's release

    The floor was iOS 26 and macOS 26, so a device had to already be on this year's OS to install Furlough at all. Both floors are 18 and 15 now. Below 26, glass buttons, panels and the half switcher draw a hand-built stand-in for Liquid Glass instead of the real material, so they read the same without needing it. One thing does step back on the older systems: a Live Activity that would announce a window ahead of time now only appears once the window opens.

1.1.0

TestFlight

Two halves, and a link between your devices.

The Anchor stopped being a feature hung off the rules and became the other half of the app: its own page, its own guide, its own way in. And the iPhone and the Mac learned to tell each other what you anchored.

  • New

    Home is two pages

    Rules on one, the Anchor on the other. The intro asks which one you came for and opens there; each half carries a three-step guide until it is set up, and the + asks which half you are adding to rather than guessing.

  • New

    A link you opt into, per device

    Link a device and the Anchor crosses to it — down, since when, until when. What you add to the Anchor can cross too, by name, so anchoring Instagram on the phone anchors it on the Mac without either device knowing the other's identifier for it.

  • New

    A starting rule, not just a tier

    Adding an app opens its first rule already written: the name and the window Furlough knows for its hazard tier, there to accept or change rather than to invent.

  • NewMac

    The web filter is offered at your first website

    Not during the first run, where it was one permission too many. macOS hides its approval behind a By category step, so the offer now walks through the approval one control at a time, with a picture of each — and a refused extension is told apart from a refused filter permission instead of guessed at.

  • NewMac

    Help is a window of its own

    It was a fixed pane hanging off the bottom of the main window. It is now resizable, can sit beside the rules while they are read, and the window's own actions moved into the toolbar where the system draws them.

  • Better

    83 companion pairs, up from 33

    Every one confirmed by a lookup rather than guessed. The utility table grew 35 apps as well — streaming, dating, gambling, AI chat and shopping, each tiered — so onboarding can name an app without waiting for the shield to learn it.

  • BetteriPhone

    The usage page opens on real icons

    Cards are drawn from the tables at once — the name, and a letter on the brand's colour — and Screen Time's own artwork takes over when it answers. The token map is kept, so the second visit opens on the real icons straight away.

  • Better

    An applied change folds down to its verdict

    With undo, edit and expand left on the line, and the whole line opening the card rather than just the word. A skipped change folds the same way, naming the rule it passed on.

  • Better

    Diagnostics say whether the devices are actually talking

    Rather than leaving "nothing happened" as the whole answer. It asks the key-value store the Anchor really travels through, and says plainly when iCloud cannot carry it.

  • Better

    Reset everything goes all the way back

    On both the phone and the Mac, a reset now returns to the first screen of the first run, which is the run worth reviewing.

  • Fixed

    Linking stopped forgetting itself

    A device that wrote to the link no longer dropped its own record of having been on it.

1.0.1

TestFlight

Two fixes on the way out of 1.0.

Cut the same morning as the last 1.0 build, for two things found in it.

  • BetteriPhone

    The Control Center button says what it did

    Dropping the Anchor from Control Center now shows the Anchor and names what it blocked, and the budget went onto the Dynamic Island.

  • Fixed

    A merged row kept its name

    Joining an app and the website it is also at read the name off the row being taken away before it went, and a target is named the moment it is picked rather than whenever the shield next learns it.

1.0.0

TestFlight

The first build.

A personal app blocker with no unblock button, on the iPhone and the Mac. No account, no server, no analytics, and no networking code at all.

  • New

    Rules: windows and budgets

    Every app and site you add gets a daily budget and, if you want, the hours it is allowed. Whichever runs out first closes it until the next opening. Budgets can be seven different figures, one per weekday.

  • New

    The delay

    Tightening a rule applies the moment you save it. Loosening one waits out a delay you set, and you can cancel it while it waits. There is no unblock button anywhere in the app, and the way out is documented rather than hidden.

  • New

    The Anchor

    One tap locks a list, or the whole device, and the only thing that lifts it is an NFC tag you paired — up to three of them, so there can be one at home and one at work. It can also be set to drop on a schedule, or for a while.

  • NewiPhone

    Built on Screen Time

    FamilyControls, ManagedSettings and DeviceActivity do the shielding, so a blocked app cannot be deleted to escape it. The shield is Furlough's own, and it says which rule closed the app and when it opens again.

  • NewMac

    The Mac enforces on its own

    Apple's Screen Time API does not exist on macOS, so Furlough shares the phone's rules engine and does the blocking itself: quitting apps, redirecting tabs, and a network filter for everything a browser will not report. Quit is refused while anything is blocked.

  • New

    Tiers, and the warnings that come with them

    Each target gets a hazard tier, and the tier decides how long its loosenings wait. A tier raised is a tightening; a tier lowered waits like everything else.

  • New

    The first week, and fifteen minutes

    Forgiveness for a mistake, never for a craving: while the first week runs, every loosening is capped at a short delay, and any change can be undone for fifteen minutes after it lands.

  • New

    Companions

    Adding the YouTube app offers youtube.com, and adding youtube.com offers the YouTube app, so one habit is one row rather than two rules that disagree.

  • New

    The record

    The streak, the minutes held, the loosenings queued and the loosenings cancelled — the contract kept, rather than a count of sessions.

  • NewiPhone

    Outside the app

    Notifications at a window's edges, a Live Activity while one runs, home screen and lock screen widgets, a Control Center button that drops the Anchor, and a What's Open shortcut.

  • NewMac

    The menu bar and the desktop

    What is open and what is held, in the menu bar, and a widget that can sit on the desktop.

  • New

    Your setup as a file

    Download your rules, budgets, tiers and delay as JSON you keep, and restore from one. A restore is a proposal rather than a rewind: every rule goes through the same delay the editor does.

  • New

    Help in the app

    Nine pages behind the question mark, not on a website that might itself be shielded. Anything with a number in it reads the number out of your own config.

  • NewiPhone

    Anchor asks for the tag too, by default

    Tapping Anchor used to lock instantly, no tag needed — only lifting it did. Now, by default, tapping Anchor asks you to hold up your tag first, the same ritual as Unanchor. Turn it off under Anchor › Tags › Scanner if you'd rather it stay instant.

  • NewiPhone

    A haptic when the anchor locks or lifts

    A short tap on the screen the moment the anchor drops or lifts, the way a payment confirms. On by default; turn it off under Anchor › Tags › Feedback.

The same notes are in the apps, under Help > What's new. Both read one file, so neither can be more up to date than the other. Anything missing:support@furloughapp.com.