A Brick alternative for iPhone with no device to buy, carry or lose

By Abel Sánchez, Founder of Plan7 · November 8, 2026 · 6 min read

The closest software-only Brick alternatives on iPhone are Apple's own Screen Time Downtime with a passcode, Opal's Deep Focus if you want a session you can't cancel, and Plan7 if you want the blocking to follow a planned week. All three block apps on a schedule with nothing to buy or carry. What you give up is Brick's physical step: no software can make you walk to another room to get your apps back.

What Brick does, and why people look for something else

Brick is a small physical device paired with an iPhone and Android app. You choose apps and modes in the app, then "activate your session by simply tapping your phone against the Brick device", per its homepage. To end the session you tap again. The FAQ says it "creates physical separation, requiring a rescan to exit", allows "up to 10 custom modes" and can block selected Safari sites on iPhone. The App Store listing adds schedules that "automatically block apps during specific moments of your day" and needs iOS 18 or later.

The design works because the device stays somewhere you have to walk to. The same design is where the complaints come from:

• You have to buy hardware. Brick is sold as a device, so trying it means ordering one and waiting for shipping.
• The puck has to be where you are. If you leave it at home and brick your phone before a trip, the FAQ points you to five Emergency Unbricks in the app. Past those, you email support.
• You still choose every hour. Brick blocks during the modes and schedules you write. Deciding when work, training or sleep should happen is left to you.

Three software-only options on iPhone

1. Screen Time Downtime with a passcode (built in)

Apple's own Downtime blocks every app outside Always Allowed during a schedule you set. On iOS 26 the steps are in Apple's guide: Settings, Screen Time, Downtime, Scheduled, then turn on Block at Downtime and set a Screen Time passcode. It costs nothing and needs no extra app. The weak spot is the passcode: if you set it yourself, you know it. Asking a partner or friend to type a passcode they keep to themselves gets you closest to Brick's effect, because the key is no longer in your hands.

2. Opal Deep Focus (a session you can't cancel)

If the tap appeals to you because it's hard to undo, Opal's Deep Focus is the software version of that. Its App Store listing calls it "the maximum level of protection" and says you can't bypass or cancel it. Opal also has schedules, per-app time limits and a free plan with one rule. We compared it with Plan7 in our Opal alternative article.

3. Plan7 (blocking that follows a planned week)

Plan7 starts with the question Brick leaves to you: when should you be focusing? You answer a few questions: one goal for 30 days, what can't move, what you protect (gym, family) and your sleep. Plan7 counts the week's 168 hours first and tells you if the goal doesn't fit. Then it builds seven days of time blocks and uses Apple's Screen Time to pause the apps and websites you picked during focus blocks, fixed commitments and bedtime, even with Plan7 closed.

Plan7 is softer than Brick on purpose. If you need a paused app, you breathe for seven seconds and open it for 5 to 60 minutes. For a stricter stretch, Zen Week hides the chosen apps all day for seven days with three five-minute passes, and you can end it early. If you want a block you truly can't get out of, Brick or Opal's Deep Focus fit better.

A weekday where the blocks come from the plan

Here is one weekday for someone whose 30-day goal is writing 5 hours a week, with an 8:30 to 17:00 job, the gym three evenings and a 23:00 bedtime. With Brick, you would write a mode for each of these windows and remember to tap. Here the windows come from the week Plan7 built.

Four weekday mornings like this one give 4 hours of writing, and the fifth hour goes on Saturday. If a meeting moves, you tell Plan7 in one message and the blocks move with it. At the end of the week, Tune my week reads how it went and rebuilds the next one.

Brick and Plan7 side by side

Who should switch, and who should keep Brick

• Keep Brick if the walk to the device is what works for you. A phone that needs a physical tap is harder to get around than anything on this page, Plan7 included.
• Keep Brick if you also use an Android phone. Plan7 runs on iPhone only.
• Try Screen Time Downtime first if your hours are the same every day and you want to spend nothing.
• Switch to Plan7 if you keep setting up blocking modes but still don't know what the focus time is for, or your week changes too often to keep the modes right.

Questions people ask

Keep reading

• The best app blocker for iPhone depends on how you slip: 7 compared
• An Opal alternative for iPhone that plans the week before it blocks apps
• How to block apps on iPhone at certain times (iOS 26 and iOS 27)