Brick Alternatives: What to Use When the Puck Isn't With You
The best Brick alternatives replace the puck's physical distance with a different bypass cost: Paywall charges real money for every early unlock, one sec inserts a forced pause before apps open, Opal and Jomo enforce scheduled sessions, ScreenZen adds free configurable delays, and Apple's Screen Time is the built-in baseline. All are software — nothing to carry, lose, or leave at home. Which one fits depends on why the puck stopped working for you.
Brick itself is a $59 NFC puck with no battery and no screen. You tap your phone against it to block the apps you've chosen, and tap it again to unblock them. The entire product rests on one idea: move the off switch onto a physical object, then leave that object somewhere inconvenient. It's a good idea. It's also why you're here. The puck is at home and you're not. Or it's somewhere in the couch. Or you've concluded that managing a second object is not how you want to live. The question is the same: what gives you Brick-grade friction without the hardware?
What Brick gets right
Fairness first. Brick does several things genuinely well:
- One-time price. $59 once, no subscription. In a category full of $30–100-a-year plans, that math ages well.
- Physical distance is real friction. Software friction lives on the same device as the temptation. Brick's friction lives across the room. Bypassing it means standing up, and standing up is where a great many impulses quietly expire.
- A simple mental model. Tapped means blocked. You can set up multiple modes with different app lists — work, sleep, weekends — but the core loop is one tap, and there's nothing to configure at the moment of temptation.
If you reliably leave the puck at home and your life happens near it, Brick is one of the strongest commitment tools you can buy. Some readers should stop here and go find their puck.
Where hardware breaks down
The failure modes are the mirror image of the strengths:
- The puck is at home. You are not. Your phone travels with you all day; the Brick doesn't. Get blocked while away from it and your options are one of five emergency unbricks per device (Cybernews review) or waiting until you're back. People who get stranded once tend to arm it less bravely afterward, which defeats the point.
- Losing it. A battery-free puck emits no signal and cannot be pinged. It is, functionally, a very important guitar pick.
- Coarse mid-session control. Brick's modes let you curate which apps are blocked, but changing your mind about one app means a trip to the puck — editing modes requires being unbricked. Software blockers handle "I need Maps but not Instagram" more gracefully.
- You still have to choose to use it. Hardware or not, a blocker only works on the days you arm it — and the days you don't feel like arming it are precisely the days you need it. That structural problem is covered in why app blockers don't work.
Software alternatives, ranked
Ranked by the thing Brick shoppers actually care about — how much friction stands between the impulse and the feed — not by feature count.
1. Paywall — replaces distance with money
Paywall takes the opposite route to the same destination. Instead of moving the off switch across the room, it attaches a price to it. You pick the apps that own you; Paywall blocks them using Apple's own Screen Time controls; opening one early costs real money. You set the price yourself — the floor is $0.50 per unlock, most people land at $1–2 — with a monthly cap so one bad week can't ruin you. An unlock buys a timed session, then the wall re-arms on its own, like a parking meter. Every wall also opens free after a delay you set when arming it (30 minutes to 24 hours), so you're never locked out of your own phone indefinitely.
The mechanism is the same one that makes Brick work: raising the cost of "just this once." Distance is a cost. So is two dollars. The difference is that the two dollars is always with you, including in airports.
Full disclosure: Paywall is pre-launch — waitlist live, App Store release upcoming. If you need something this afternoon, keep reading.
Best for: people whose Brick failed at the exact moment they weren't near it.
2. one sec — a pause instead of a puck
one sec inserts a short breathing exercise between tapping an app and the app opening. A 2023 study in PNAS found this forced pause reduced target-app openings by about 57%. It's free for one app; Pro runs €14.99 a year, about $20 in the US (one sec FAQ). This is the lightest-touch option here: no lockouts, no hardware, just a speed bump. The known failure mode is habituation — after a few weeks the pause becomes part of the choreography and you swipe through it. When that happens, see one sec alternatives.
Best for: milder cases; interrupting autopilot rather than enforcing abstinence.
3. Opal or Jomo — schedules instead of taps
Both are polished iOS schedule blockers built on Apple's Screen Time framework. Opal ($99.99/year, per its App Store listing) leans on recurring focus sessions and strict modes that resist casual dismissal; Jomo has a free tier, cheaper plans, and a one-time lifetime option. What they do well: enforcing predictable windows — no social apps before noon, nothing after 10 p.m. Where they fall short of Brick: the strictest software mode is still software, and can be removed or have its permissions revoked in under a minute. Both are compared in detail in our best app blockers for iPhone roundup.
Best for: people whose problem is predictable time windows, not random impulses.
4. ScreenZen — free friction
ScreenZen adds short, configurable delays and open limits before your chosen apps launch, and it's genuinely free. It's the best zero-cost starting point in the category. The delays are dismissible enough that committed scrollers wear through them, but as a first experiment it costs you nothing to find out which kind of scroller you are.
Best for: testing whether friction works on you before spending money on it.
5. Apple Screen Time — already on your phone
Free and built in: app limits, downtime, content restrictions. The catch is the "Ignore Limit" button — one tap and the wall is gone. As a commitment device it's a suggestion box. But it's the right first step, and every third-party blocker on this list is built on top of it anyway.
The honest verdict
Hardware's advantage is real: distance is the one kind of friction software can't fake. Its drawback is logistics — the object must be where you need it, every day, forever. Software's advantage is that it's always present; its drawback is that it can always be deleted. Nothing on iOS is bypass-proof, Brick included. So the practical question isn't "which blocker can't be beaten" — none can — it's "which cost am I least willing to pay at 11 p.m.": standing up, waiting out a timer, or paying money that shows up on a statement. Apps built on that third option are a small, specific category; here's the full list.
FAQ
Is there a Brick app without the device? Brick's app is designed around the physical puck: you can start a block from the app anywhere, but ending one means tapping the puck — or spending one of your five emergency unbricks, which drops every wall at once. If you want blocking without the object, the options above are the category to shop in.
What should I do if I lost my Brick? Check Brick's own support for emergency-unlock options — five emergency unbricks per account, refillable by emailing support — then decide whether the loss was a fluke or a verdict. If losable objects are a recurring risk in your household, software removes that failure mode.
What's the cheapest Brick alternative? ScreenZen and Apple's built-in Screen Time are both free. They're also both easier to dismiss than a puck across the room — you're trading friction for price.
Is any app blocker as hard to bypass as Brick? No blocker on iOS — hardware-paired or not — is impossible to bypass; any of them can be deleted or stripped of permissions. They differ in what the bypass costs you in that moment: seconds, steps across a room, or actual money.
Try Paywall
If your Brick is currently lost somewhere in your own home, consider a deterrent that lives in the phone and simply invoices you instead. Paywall blocks the apps you choose and charges you real money to open them early. Resisting is free.