Mado

Mado is an app blocker for iPhone built on one observation: the problem is rarely the app itself, it is opening the app without ever deciding to.

You pick the apps that pull you in. Instagram, TikTok, X, Reddit, YouTube, news, whatever your list looks like. From then on, opening one of them does not open a feed. It opens a shield, and the shield gives you two buttons and no third. Close the app, or enter for fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes is the only unit Mado deals in, and every app gets its own budget for the day. You set that budget by picking a focus mode: Shizuku (滴, droplet) gives three sessions per app per day, Nagare (流, flow) gives two, Izumi (泉, spring) gives one. Spend an app's sessions and that app is locked until midnight. No extend button, no snooze, no five more minutes.

The part that makes it hold is what happens when you try to loosen your own rules. Raising your session count or dropping an app from the list does not take effect until the next midnight, while tightening applies immediately. The version of you at 11pm cannot overrule the version of you that set the limit. That is the loophole most blockers leave open, and closing it is the whole product.

The shield is where the work happens. Doomscrolling is not usually a decision, it is a reflex: the phone is already in your hand and the feed is already loading before you notice. Mado interrupts the reflex, hands the choice back, and counts what you decided. A hundred closed shields is roughly twenty five hours that did not go into a feed.