Brick alternative

Brick is a small magnetic box with an NFC chip. You tap your phone on it and the apps of the current mode go dark; you tap again and they come back. This page is for anyone who uses it, or is about to, and wonders what a Brick alternative looks like when the key isn’t an object you can leave on the fridge.

What Brick does well

The tap is a good ritual. The box stays where you put it, on the fridge or the desk, and the phone leaves the room without its distractions. The friction is spatial: to unblock, you have to walk back to the box. For a lot of people that walk is exactly the pause they needed, and the object sitting in plain sight in the kitchen keeps the decision honest.

The blocking itself is thorough. Up to ten modes, each with its own list of blocked apps or, in Allow mode, the only apps that stay open. On iPhone a mode can take everything except Phone, plus websites chosen from the Safari list Apple provides. Schedules brick and unbrick the phone on their own, and a Strict Mode stops you from deleting the app or touching Screen Time while a session runs.

It’s also built for a household. One Brick serves everyone, any phone works with any box, and the box is a one-time purchase with no subscription behind it. When the box isn’t at hand, Brick from anywhere starts a session by holding a button.

Where Brick stops

The whole design rests on one idea: the key lives in a place. That is its strength and, read the other way, its limit. If the box is at home and you are at work, or if it has slipped behind the fridge, the app can’t be unlocked by normal means. Brick plans for this with five Emergency Unbricks per account, which lift everything at once; once they’re spent, you write to support and wait for a top-up. Most people searching for an alternative arrive from here: a lost box, a forgotten box, or a box that is simply in another building.

The reverse is just as true. When the box is within reach, the app alone doesn’t constrain much. Leaving a session costs the walk to the box, and if the box is on the desk you’re sitting at, there is no walk. Nothing is asked in exchange for the exit except the trip; unbricking during a schedule simply ends the schedule.

A few smaller edges. Websites on iPhone come from a list Apple generates and you can’t extend it, so blocking another browser means blocking the browser entirely, and Android doesn’t block sites at all. Apps marked Always Allowed in Screen Time pass through. Neither a laptop nor a tablet is covered, and some users say the distraction simply moved there — Tempo has that limit too, and we come back to it below. Brick also asks for an account, with a name and an e-mail, to get started.

What Tempo does differently

• The key is on you, not on the fridge. Tempo earns screen minutes from workouts read in Apple Health or Health Connect, with a rate per sport: an hour of cycling and an hour of walking don’t pay the same. Without a watch, steps do the job, about ten minutes of walking per thousand steps, paid at the walking rate. You can’t leave your body at home, and there is nothing to tap: the credit lands without opening the app.
• A balance, not a switch. Brick is on or off. Tempo keeps one balance of screen minutes shared by every blocked app. While it’s positive, they all open; real use drains it minute by minute, following the system’s own Screen Time (43 minutes debited for 44 counted by iOS, measured on device). At zero, everything closes at once, without opening Tempo.
• The exit costs something you wanted anyway. With Brick, leaving a session costs a trip. With Tempo it costs a workout, at the exchange rate you chose at install: ×1, one minute of activity for one minute of screen, ×2 or ×3. Workouts typed by hand into Health don’t count; only what a sensor recorded. On iPhone with a watch, heart rate raises the rate when you push, never lowers it (Tempo Pro).
• No emergency quota, because there is no emergency. Minutes expire after 24 hours, so there is no stock for Sunday, and there is no one to write to when it runs out: you go for a walk. Strict mode, in Pro, makes loosening any setting wait 24 hours while tightening is immediate, and on iPhone it can remove the Delete App button from the Home Screen. Outside strict mode you can uninstall Tempo and the block falls: it’s self-restriction, not parental control.
• No account, no server. Nothing to create, nothing leaves the device, no analytics; the App Store listing carries the Data Not Collected label. The flip side is real: no sync between devices, no shared household setup, no Mac or PC version.

Who should stay on Brick

If what you want is a clean, total cut, everything but Phone, at a fixed hour, and you like the ritual of an object on the fridge, Brick does that better than Tempo, which never blocks the whole phone. If you set the rule for a household, one box for everyone is hard to beat. If you refuse subscriptions on principle, Brick has none, and Tempo’s free tier may or may not be enough for you. And if moving more isn’t part of what you want, Tempo’s mechanism is just one more constraint.

Pricing on both sides changes: check it on each listing rather than in a comparison page — this one included.

Frequently asked questions

Brick vs Tempo: what’s the real difference?

Brick puts the key in a place: the box stays on the fridge, and lifting the block means going back to it. Tempo puts the key in your body: workouts and steps read from Health or Health Connect earn a balance of screen minutes, and using the apps spends it. Brick is a switch, on or off; Tempo is a balance that drains.

Can I keep Brick and use Tempo at the same time?

Yes, and neither touches the other: Tempo doesn’t read Brick’s account, modes or history, and uninstalling one changes nothing for the other. But two blockers on the same apps step on each other, because an app stays closed as long as either one says so. Give each its own set of apps, or use one at a time.

Do I need to buy anything to try Tempo?

No box, no hardware. A watch helps, because workouts get credited at their own rate, but steps from the phone are enough to start. The free version blocks as many apps as you want and lets you spend up to 60 screen minutes a day; Tempo Pro, monthly, yearly or lifetime, lifts that cap and adds strict mode and the full journal. Current pricing is on the App Store and Play listings.