alternativy, na rovinu
Brick alternatives: the lock without buying the hardware
Brick's idea is genuinely clever: put the key to your distracting apps into a physical NFC tag, leave the tag in another room, and let geography do what willpower wouldn't. People search for alternatives for three honest reasons, the object costs real money, the tag stays wherever you left it when you need flexibility, and some discover the walk stops working the way every friction eventually does. Here is the map, by what you actually liked about Brick.
The same NFC idea, indie-sized: Foqos#
If the tap-a-tag ritual is the part that works for you, Foqos is the indie take on the same mechanism: NFC-triggered blocking on the iPhone, run by a solo developer rather than a company shipping hardware. The trade is polish and ecosystem for price and simplicity. It shares Brick's virtue, a physical gesture marks the mode switch, and Brick's honest limit, the gesture is only as far away as you put it.
A different physical key: Unpluq#
Unpluq plays the same physical-key game with its own tag hardware and a subscription around it. Worth a look if you want the physical mechanism with a different app philosophy attached; worth skipping if the point of leaving Brick was to stop buying objects. Between the two, the mechanics differ less than the pricing models do.
The wall without the object: Opal and ScreenZen#
If what you wanted was the lock rather than the object, software does lock. Opal is the hardest software wall in the store, scheduled no-unblock sessions, rules that follow you to the Mac, and ScreenZen is the free, gentler cousin, pause screens with unusually deep per-app rules. The difference from Brick is philosophical: a software lock's key is always in your pocket, because you are the key. The research on how that plays out is worth ten minutes.
The opposite bet: finit#
Ours, so judge accordingly. Brick assumes the phone must be made harder to use; finit assumes the hours must be made impossible to ignore. It blocks nothing and keeps the honest record instead, every day, for years beyond Apple's four-week memory, on your home and lock screen, at the scale of a life. Some people who tried locks discover the missing piece was never enforcement; it was evidence. The full category map sorts all of this by job.
The free experiment before any purchase#
If Brick is on your wishlist rather than in your drawer, run the zero-cost version first: Apple's own App Limits with Block at End of Limit and a passcode, plus the phone charging in another room at night. Two weeks of that answers the real question, does distance work on you, before any tag, subscription or gadget gets involved. The same logic we give people considering a dumbphone applies one shelf down.
Krátké odpovědi#
Is there a free alternative to Brick?
The closest free approximations are Apple's own App Limits configured strictly with a passcode, and ScreenZen's free pause screens. They lack the physical tag, which is Brick's whole trick, but they cover the blocking half at no cost.
What is the difference between Brick and Foqos?
Both block apps behind an NFC tap. Brick is a polished product with its own hardware tag; Foqos is an indie app take on the same mechanism. The core ritual, tapping a physical object to switch modes, is the same idea at different sizes.
Does the physical-lock approach actually work?
It works exactly as far as the distance does: a tag in another room adds a real walk to every relapse, which beats a tap-through pause. Its limit is honest too, since you can always go get the tag. Research suggests any added delay helps, and bigger delays help more.
What if I don't want blocking at all?
Then the alternative is measurement rather than enforcement: keeping the honest record visible and letting it do the persuading. That is finit's approach, tracking and keeping your screen time without locking anything.
Locks, tags and walls all rent their power from your resolve. The record is the one tool that works the same on your worst day. Keep it.
