Latch

Latch is an app blocker for iPhone and Android that puts the unlock button across the room. Instead of relying on willpower every time your hand goes for the phone, Latch locks the apps that eat your day, and the only way to open them again is to scan your key — an NFC sticker stuck to the fridge, a printed QR code taped in the car — or to walk a number of steps you chose in advance. The few minutes it takes to get up and reach the key are usually enough to change your mind. Latch is free on iPhone, iPad and Android, and it is built for anyone who wants their phone to be a few steps harder to pick up. Most screen-time tools ask you to confirm your own intentions at the exact moment you are least likely to honour them: a single tap on an ignore button takes a second, and the feed opens anyway. Latch approaches the problem differently by moving the decision out of the moment. You decide once, when you set the key up and put it somewhere else, and after that you do not need willpower every time your hand goes for the phone. The product is described as the app blocker you unlock by walking to your key, and the whole design is built around the idea that a short walk, a scan or a flight of stairs is what actually interrupts the habit. The interface aims to be calm on purpose, with little to fiddle with. Setup starts with choosing what pulls you in. Latch shows which apps took the most of your week — the site illustrates a Limits page listing Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X, Reddit and Messenger with their weekly hours — and you pick those apps, or whole categories and websites, and save them as a profile. You might keep one profile for work and one for bed. Built-in profiles for Work, Social and Bedtime come filled in with the usual apps, so you can start without building a list from scratch; Bedtime, for example, ships with a schedule that holds until you scan your key. Profiles are the unit everything else attaches to: keys unlock profiles, places and schedules lock them, and the block screen names which profile did the locking. Your key is deliberately cheap and deliberately physical. There are three kinds. An NFC sticker — any NTAG213, NTAG215 or NTAG216 tag, a few cents each — lets you hold your phone near it without opening Latch first; Latch writes the key to the sticker for you and locks it with a password, so no one can write over it. A printed QR code prints in black and white on any printer or saves as a PDF, and you scan the paper once to finish setup; you are told to keep it away from your phone and not photograph it, and if a copy gets out you print a new code from the key's page and the old one stops working. A steps key makes walking itself the key: pick anything from 500 to 20,000 steps, tap Walk to unlock, and only steps taken after you tap count, so this morning's run does not. Steps keep counting with the screen off. You can mix the three, and with Pro you can add as many keys as you like. One key works with every phone you own and can be shared with the people you live with by inviting them from the key's page. Latch can also lock before you think to. With Places, you pick a place such as the office or the gym and a profile; Latch locks when you get there and can unlock when you leave. Schedules can run every weekday morning, or at bedtime until you scan, or only while you are at a place, like weekdays nine to five at the office. For driving, you pick a profile to lock while you drive, and Latch notices a drive on its own and can unlock a few minutes after you stop; passengers get an I'm a passenger button. You can trigger a lock with one press or one sentence: say Siri, Latch my phone or Latch my phone with Work, or on Android say Hey Google, Latch my phone, and you can also lock from Control Center, the Action button or Shortcuts on iPhone and from a Quick Settings tile on Android. Tapping again opens the scanner, because only your key unlocks. Any profile can also switch on a filter for explicit websites while it is locked. While you are locked, a set of rules decides how much friction there is. Hard lock is on from the start, and you choose what else stops while you are locked: deleting apps, installing apps and in-app purchases, with Android additionally blocking installing apps and the Play Store. Commitment mode keeps you locked for at least 30 minutes, or up to 8 hours, and not even your key opens it before then. Break glass is available three times a month for when you really need in: you say why, your apps open for 5 to 15 minutes, then lock again on their own. Daily limits give an app or a whole category 15 minutes a day while you are unlocked, and scanning your key buys one more round, so every extra 15 minutes costs a walk. Key hours let a key unlock only between set hours, like after 5 pm on work days. Each profile can carry a line of your own words on the block screen, such as Finish your work first, and the screen tells you which app it is and what locked it. The overall approach is best described as one decision instead of many. You choose the apps, save them as a profile, and place the key somewhere you would have to get up for. Sliding the latch blocks the apps, and day to day the only way back in is scanning the key, walking your steps, a schedule's end time, leaving a place you set to unlock, or Break glass. That structure is what separates a lock from a limit in Latch: a lock blocks a whole profile until you scan your key, while a daily limit works while you are unlocked and only blocks the single app or category that has used up its daily time, resetting at midnight. Latch mixes physical and automatic triggers, so a sticker can handle home and a steps key can handle being out. Time back is the point. Latch reports locked time by week, month and all time, how often you reached for a blocked app, and how it compares with last week; there is a daily lock goal, streaks, daily app averages, and the option to turn your week into a card and send it to a friend who is trying too. A live timer sits in the Dynamic Island on iPhone and in your notifications on Android, and you can turn it off. Privacy is treated as a feature: no accounts, no analytics and no ads, with your choices staying on your phone. On iPhone, Apple's Screen Time hides them even from Latch, and synced keys and history live in your private iCloud database; on Android everything stays on the phone and Latch's accessibility service checks which app is open and keeps nothing. Keys are never stored readable — only a one-way hash of each key's secret is kept. The site names concrete scenarios. With the kids, a profile for evenings keeps the feeds shut until bedtime. For deep work, the Work profile locks every weekday morning on its own. When studying, you commit to two hours and not even your key opens it early. On the mat, you take an hour for yourself with the phone in the other room. Out on the bike, you leave the key at home and ride without the feed. Behind the wheel, Latch locks when you drive and unlocks when you park. Keys themselves get placed in everyday spots — on the fridge, in the car's glovebox, at your desk at work, by the front door, in a drawer downstairs, or with a friend — and the app supports a desk tag that only unlocks at home. Latch is free to download on iPhone and iPad (iOS 17 and later) and on Android (Android 9 and later). The free tier covers everything you need for one routine: one key (NFC or QR), three profiles, two places, weekly stats, streaks and daily app averages, Hard lock and Break glass, plus widgets, the live timer and iCloud sync on iPhone. Latch Pro is a single $9.99 purchase through the App Store or Google Play and never renews; it adds unlimited keys, unlimited profiles and places, schedules, daily limits per app or category, commitment mode, lock while driving (and during Do Not Disturb on Android), key hours and a steps key, and full history with month and all-time views. A Latch Key Kit with three NFC stickers and three peel-and-stick QR keys costs $7.99 with free shipping in the US. There is no subscription, no account and no ads. In short, Latch takes the unlock button and moves it across the room. By turning a few-cent sticker, a printed sheet of paper or a short walk into the only way back into your distracting apps, it replaces constant in-the-moment willpower with one decision you make in advance — and makes your phone a few steps harder to pick up.