Set a thirty-minute limit on the app that eats your evenings. Come back in a week and check whether you kept it.
Most people did not, and the usual explanation is discipline. It is not discipline. It is that an App Limit and a block are two different mechanisms, and almost everyone sets up the first while believing they set up the second.
What an App Limit actually does
It runs a timer, and when the timer expires it shows you a screen.
That screen is a notification with buttons. One more minute. Remind me in fifteen. Ignore the limit for the rest of today. The app is not closed, it is covered, and there is a documented, supported, one-tap way back into it.
So an App Limit is not a lock. It is a measurement with a prompt attached. It is genuinely useful if what you needed was to find out how long you spend in there. It does very little if what you needed was to not open it.
The nine in the evening problem
Here is the asymmetry that decides the outcome.
You set the limit at ten in the morning, rested, coffee in hand, thinking about the week. You meet the limit at nine in the evening, tired, decision-depleted, and looking for exactly the thing the limit is standing in front of.
Those two people are not equals. The morning version has judgement and no urge. The evening version has an urge and one button. Any system that asks the evening version to re-decide is going to lose, and it is going to lose most nights, because it only has to lose once for the day.
A limit asks you to decide again. That is its entire design, and that is why it fails.
The setting almost nobody turns on
If you use nothing else from this post, use this.
Open Settings, then Screen Time, then App Limits. Tap the limit you set. Turn on Block at End of Limit.
With that switched on, the one-minute extension is no longer offered. The app locks when time runs out. It is the difference between a sign and a door, and it is one toggle deep in a screen most people set up once and never revisit.
Do it for every limit you have, then move your limits up to whole categories so that reinstalling an app does not hand you a clean slate.
Then there is the passcode
Even with Block at End of Limit switched on, a limit is only as firm as the Screen Time passcode standing in front of it, and you are the person who chose that passcode.
We have written about that trap on its own in The Screen Time Passcode Problem, so it is enough to say here that a stricter setting is not the end of the story.
What a real block has to do
Strip away the marketing from every blocking tool, including ours, and there are only three things that matter.
It does not ask you to re-decide. When you reach for the app, the answer is already settled. No dialogue, no options screen, no negotiation at the worst possible moment.
Getting out costs more than getting in. Undoing a block should take real time or real effort, and crucially that cost has to land before the app opens, not after. Any escape hatch that takes four seconds is not a cost, it is a formality.
It covers the workaround. Blocking an app and leaving its website open is not blocking. Blocking one feed app while three others sit on the home screen is not blocking. The block has to cover the category and the web route, or you will find the gap within a day, without even trying to.
When a limit is the right tool
Be fair to App Limits. If you want to know where your hours go, they are good. If the app is genuinely useful and the problem is only volume, a limit plus Block at End of Limit is often enough.
Limits are also the right choice for a shared or family device where one person is setting rules for another, because then the two-person design is a feature rather than a loophole.
Where limits reliably fail is the case most people actually have: one person, their own phone, one or two apps that pull harder than they can argue with at the end of a long day.
Do this today
Turn on Block at End of Limit for every limit you have, and move those limits up to categories rather than individual apps.
If you do both and the limit still keeps losing, the tool is not the problem and neither are you. The mechanism is wrong for the job. Appblox blocks apps, categories and sites without handing you a dismiss button at the moment you are least able to ignore it.
If you are setting this up from scratch, start with How to Block Apps on iPhone. What changed in the latest release is in iOS 27 and App Blocking.
Frequently asked questions
Why do my Screen Time app limits not work? Because a limit ends in a prompt rather than a lock. When the timer expires you are offered one more minute, a reminder later, or ignoring the limit for the rest of the day, and a single tap puts you back into the app.
What does Block at End of Limit do? It removes the one-minute extension. You will find it in Settings, then Screen Time, then App Limits, by tapping the limit you want to change. With it switched on, the app locks when the time runs out.
Can someone bypass an App Limit without the Screen Time passcode? If no Screen Time passcode has been set, the limit can be dismissed in one tap by anyone holding the phone. Setting a passcode stops other people, but it does not stop you, because you chose the code.
Is an app blocker better than Screen Time? They do different jobs. Screen Time measures your usage and prompts you about it. A blocker is for the case where you do not want to be asked again at the moment you are least able to say no.