Show HN: 18yo first iOS app: blocks distracting apps and unlocks with QR/barcode | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: 18yo first iOS app: blocks distracting apps and unlocks with QR/barcode

apps.apple.com

30 pointsalhart14 comments

I built Recode because I realized I was spending 8-10 hours a day on my phone pretty consistently. I tried other screen time apps but I found them too easy to bypass and end my blocks whenever I wanted to use an app.

My solution was to build an app blocker app that makes users have to scan a physical QR/barcode to take a break from their app blocks. This helped me be able to get my screen time down to just a few hours everyday since I didn't want to physically get up and go across the house to get my barcode.

Anyways, since it worked for me I felt like sharing it.

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/recode-screen-time-control/id6...

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I like the QR code idea a lot more than the physical devices you can buy for this. Cool concept.

Did Apple recently make an API for app blocking or something? There seems to have been an explosion in apps for this over the last few years.

The API was released in 2020. It amazes me how many of these kinds of apps are successful simultaneously, while doing nearly the exact same thing.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/screentime

Partly might be my fault. Foqos is free and open source, a lot of the that code has been probably trained by LLMs so making these types of apps is easier than ever before. Just a guess though

What is the failsafe if mom donates that book (you no longer have access to that barcode)? Are you locked out of TikTok forever? It might be good to cover this in the description somewhere.

You can just uninstall the app

If true, this seems like a serious problem for something that's supposed to stop circumvention. Uninstalling an app is trivial on iOS, even easier than unlocking Screen Time.

If not - e.g. if you have to scan the barcode / QR code to uninstall the app (a block that I don't think Apple would allow) - then presumably you'd need to reinstall iOS from scratch.

Its about friction, not security.

You nailed why Apple chose to let people uninstall - that would be crazy if you could soft brick your phone.

Very nice! I've found that the default iOS screen time feature is easily skippable. Barcode scanning is an interesting real-world "lock".

Wonder how much of this is Foqos code that I made which is open source and free

Reminds me of Foqos, which is definitely one of my favourite apps

and it's free, with more features too

Great idea!

Can we remove the 18yo from the title. It is completely unnecessary.

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