Jomo alternative

Jomo blocks apps and websites on iPhone and Mac with five kinds of rules, and its Routines already let you earn screen time by walking or closing your Apple Watch rings. If you typed “Jomo alternative”, you’re probably asking whether an app where exercise is the only way back in does the job better. This page answers that, including the places where Jomo keeps the edge.

What Jomo does well

Jomo covers a lot of ground. A rule can block a set of apps or sites for a while, on a recurring schedule, behind a daily limit, or under a continuous lock with a few timed openings a day. You can also flip it around and block everything except a handful of apps. On iPhone, sites are blocked in every browser through Screen Time; on Mac, a separate app handles apps, sites, keywords, categories and allow-lists.

Then there are Routines, and this is the part that matters if you’re reading a Tempo page: Jomo already lets you earn screen time by doing something first. A Walk First goal sets a step count, adjustable, and unlocks time as you pass thresholds. Closing your Apple Watch activity rings can open your apps. Tempo didn’t invent this idea, and Jomo’s version is a real one, read from Apple Health.

Its Strict Mode is unusually fine-grained. Four protections (no deleting the rule, no editing it, no uninstalling Jomo, no changing the date and time) combine with four windows: a number of hours after you start, the session or the limit itself, recurring ranges, or always-on until you retype a random code or a password. Add widgets on the home screen, the lock screen and the Mac, Shortcuts, Focus Modes, and a screen-time journal with a before and after. And Jomo documents the limits of Screen Time itself instead of hiding them — few blockers do.

Where Jomo stops

The limit is in what the block asks of you on the way out. By default, you unlock a Jomo rule yourself, to scroll intentionally, as the app puts it. Strict Mode closes that door, but what it puts in its place is a wait, a code or a password: the block lifts because time passed or because you insisted, not because you did something. Emergency Mode adds two exits a week that can’t be fully switched off. Walking is one rule type among five, and it sits next to those other ways out rather than replacing them.

The currency is steps and rings. A step is a step: a slow stroll and a hard run pay the same per thousand. Rings are a daily yes or no. And we found nothing in Jomo’s documentation about workouts typed by hand into Health, so we won’t claim either way; it’s a question worth asking before you trust a balance.

The rest is what users report rather than what the design says. Setup asks for Screen Time access several times over. Some say the time counted on apps doesn’t match what they used, and that blocks don’t always land on time. Rules don’t sync between iPhone and Mac yet; the help points you to Apple’s Focus Modes in the meantime. Several reviews find that nearly everything is paid and that the paywall pushes. And streaks create their own pressure, the opposite of what some people came for.

What Tempo does differently

• Movement is the only key. No manual unlock, no emergency pass, no timer that ends the block on its own. Your blocked apps share one balance of screen minutes. Above zero they all open; at zero they all close, and iOS itself applies the block, even with Tempo shut. The only thing that raises the balance is a workout or steps.
• Workouts with a rate per sport, not just a step count. Tempo reads workouts from Apple Health or Health Connect and credits them at the sport’s rate: an hour of cycling and an hour of walking don’t pay the same. Without a watch, steps still count, at the walking rate, which is half an intense session. With a watch on iPhone, Tempo Pro also reads heart rate: when you push, a minute pays more than your rate, never less.
• Hand-entered workouts are left out. A session typed into Health or Health Connect never reaches the balance. Only sensor-recorded ones count: Apple Watch, another watch, or an app like Strava.
• The count follows the system’s own Screen Time. Real use drains the balance minute by minute: 43 minutes debited for 44 counted by iOS, measured on device. And earned minutes expire after 24 hours — no stockpile for Sunday.
• No account, no server, no streak. Nothing to create, nothing leaves the phone, no analytics; the App Store listing reads “Data Not Collected”. There is no tree to grow and no score to protect. The mechanism works by exposure to the balance you don’t have, not by motivation.

When Jomo is the better fit

Stay on Jomo if you need a Mac, full stop: Tempo runs on iPhone, Apple Watch and Android, with no desktop version and no sync between devices. Stay if you block websites in Chrome or another browser on iPhone, since Tempo’s site blocking covers Safari only, and nothing on Android. Stay if you rely on a schedule, a daily limit, or a block on everything except a few apps, because Tempo has one rule and it’s the same for every app you pick. Stay if you want the granular Strict Mode, an emergency exit, more widgets, Shortcuts or Focus Modes. And stay if, honestly, you want to keep the option of unlocking yourself. Tempo removes it.

Pricing on both sides changes: check the current grid on the App Store and Play listings rather than in a comparison page, this one included.

Frequently asked questions

Jomo vs Tempo: which one blocks harder?

They answer different questions. Jomo’s Strict Mode is finer-grained: four protections, four windows, a code or a password to get out, and two emergencies a week. Tempo has no exit at all besides movement: at zero balance your apps stay closed until your next workout or your next steps, and Tempo Pro’s strict mode only makes you wait 24 hours before loosening a setting. If you want to keep a door, even a locked one, that’s Jomo. If you want there to be none, that’s Tempo.

Can I use Jomo and Tempo at the same time?

Yes, they don’t know about each other and don’t interfere. But two blockers on the same apps step on each other: when one has reopened an app, the other still holds it shut, and you won’t know which one decided. The split that works: Jomo for the Mac, websites and schedules; Tempo for the apps you want to pay for in exercise.

Do I lose my Jomo history if I switch to Tempo?

Tempo doesn’t touch it: it reads nothing from Jomo and imports nothing. Your Jomo journal stays in Jomo as long as the app is installed. Tempo keeps its own journal, on device and without an account, from the day you install it; the full journal and its curve are part of Tempo Pro.