How to Lock Apps on iPhone (and Make the Lock Actually Hold)

There are two reasons to lock an app on your iPhone. One is to keep other people out: the friend scrolling through your photos, the coworker borrowing your phone for a call. The other is to keep yourself out: the feed you open forty times a day without deciding to.

Your iPhone has a different tool for each, and mixing them up is why so many locks don't work. Here's how to set up both on iOS 26 and iOS 27, and how to make the second kind hold when you're tired.

Which lock do you need?

• To keep other people out of an app: Require Face ID.
• To hide an app from your Home Screen: Hide and Require Face ID.
• To use an app less each day: Time Allowances (iOS 27) or App Limits (iOS 26), in Screen Time.
• To keep apps closed at set hours: a Screen Time Schedule (iOS 27) or Downtime (iOS 26).
• To keep a limit when you're tired: a passcode you don't know, a lock with no ignore button, or distance.

How to lock an app with Face ID

Since iOS 18, you can make an app ask for Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode before it opens ^[1]. On iOS 26 and iOS 27:

1. Go to the Home Screen and touch and hold the app until its quick actions menu opens.
2. Tap Require Face ID (or Require Touch ID, or Require Passcode).
3. In the options that appear, tap Require Face ID to lock the app, or Hide and Require Face ID to lock it and hide it too.

From then on, the app asks for your face, fingerprint or passcode every time it opens, and it locks again as soon as you quit it. There's a privacy bonus: information inside a locked app won't show up elsewhere, such as in notification previews, search, Siri suggestions or your call history ^[1]. The lock applies to that iPhone only and doesn't sync through iCloud ^[1].

To remove it, touch and hold the app, tap Don't Require Face ID, then confirm with your face, fingerprint or passcode ^[1]. A few apps that come with the iPhone can't be locked; Apple's iOS 26 guide names Calculator, Camera, Clock, Contacts, Find My, Maps, Shortcuts and Settings ^[2].

How to hide an app

Hiding goes a step further. The app disappears from your Home Screen, the App Library and search results, and moves to a Hidden folder at the bottom of the App Library that needs Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode to open ^[1]. Only apps you downloaded from the App Store can be hidden, not the ones that come with the iPhone ^[1].

To open a hidden app, swipe left past your last Home Screen page to the App Library, tap the Hidden folder at the bottom and confirm it's you. On iOS 27, Settings, then Apps, then Hidden Apps lists them all ^[1].

How to lock apps to use them less

The second kind of lock keeps you out, and it lives in Screen Time. iOS 27 reorganized it, so the steps depend on your version (Settings, General, About shows it).

On iOS 27: Time Allowances and Schedules

In iOS 27, Time Allowances set how long you can use your apps each day and Schedules set when; both need iOS 27 or later on all your Apple devices ^[3].

1. Set a daily allowance. Open Settings, tap Screen Time, then Time Allowances. Tap a category and drag its slider. To give one kind of app its own allowance, tap Manage Categories, tap the plus button and pick a category ^[3].
2. Set a schedule. In Screen Time, tap Screen Time Schedule and turn on Schedule. Tap Add Schedule, choose the days, then set time windows and which allowance categories each window allows ^[3].
3. Keep the essentials open. Tap Always Allowed, then Add People or Add Apps, for the contacts and apps you need at any hour, such as Maps or the people you'd call in an emergency ^[3].
4. Lock the settings. Tap Manage Screen Time, then Lock Screen Time Settings, and enter a four-digit passcode twice ^[4].

On iOS 26 and earlier: App Limits and Downtime

1. Turn on tracking. In Settings, tap Screen Time, then App & Website Activity, and turn it on if you haven't already ^[5].
2. Set a daily limit. Tap App Limits, then Add Limit. Choose one or more categories, or tap a category to pick single apps, tap Next, and set the time. Customize Days lets each day have its own limit ^[5].
3. Schedule Downtime. Tap Downtime, then Scheduled, choose Every Day or Customize Days, and set the start and end times ^[5].
4. Make Downtime block. Set a Screen Time passcode, then turn on Block at Downtime. With it on, restricted apps can't be opened during downtime; with it off, you only see a reminder and can carry on ^[5].
5. Keep the essentials open under Always Allowed ^[5].

Why Screen Time locks give way

Apple's iOS 26 guide is blunt: "By default, Screen Time limits can be ignored once reached" ^[5]. When a limit runs out, you can choose to ignore it, and at 10:40 p.m. that tap is very easy. A passcode makes Downtime block for real ^[5], but if you set the passcode yourself, you know it.

A lock you can open with one tap isn't a lock. It's a speed bump.

How to make the lock hold

Firmer locks work better, the research suggests, though they cost something too. In a four-week study, 36 people tried three versions of a phone limit app, one week each ^[6]:

• A reminder they could dismiss cut their weekday phone use by about 32 minutes a day, a change too small to be reliable.
• Lockouts that repeated and grew longer cut it by about 50 minutes a day.
• A lockout that held until midnight cut it by about 74 minutes a day.

The firmer the lock, the more it worked, and the more frustrating it felt; most people preferred the middle option ^[6]. Gentle nudges help while they last, too. In a three-week experiment with 50 people, a phone that vibrated every few seconds once a daily app limit was passed cut daily use by more than 20%, but the effect faded once the vibrations stopped ^[7]. So aim for a lock firm enough to survive a tired evening, and no firmer than you'll keep.

There are three ways to take the easy tap away.

Hand the passcode to someone else. Ask a partner or a friend to type in your Screen Time passcode, so you can't loosen your own settings on a weak night without asking them. It works as long as you don't ask.

Use a lock with no ignore button. Unrotten locks the apps you choose with Apple's Screen Time shield, the same system screen Screen Time uses, but its shield has no "ignore limit" button: it closes the app instead. Your goals decide when it comes up:

• Less scrolling gives those apps a daily limit; when it's used up, they stay locked until the day resets.
• Shorter scroll sessions sets a session length; past it, the apps take a break before they open again.
• Time away from apps blocks them during the hours you choose, or allows them only within one window.
• A phone-free session (Work, Focus or Reading, from the + button on Home) locks them until it ends.

A limit you raise mid-day only counts from tomorrow, so there's nothing to bargain with at 11 p.m. It's a commitment device rather than a vault: turning a goal off, or removing Unrotten's Screen Time access, lifts its shield. And because Screen Time hands Unrotten the apps you chose as private tokens, Unrotten never learns which apps they are.

Put distance between you and the phone. A timed lock box or a physical blocker makes the phone itself harder to reach; our guide to phone lock boxes compares them. To see every app-based option side by side, read our comparison of the best app blockers for iPhone.

Tips that make any lock work better

• Start with your numbers. Settings, then Screen Time shows the two or three apps that take most of your day. Lock those first, not everything.
• Turn off their notifications. Every alert is an invitation to open the app you just locked.
• Move them off your Home Screen. When an app is three swipes away, the automatic tap has time to become a decision.
• Add a Focus, but don't count on it to lock anything. Apple describes Focus as a way to silence notifications, or allow only some, and to switch to a Lock Screen or Home Screen page with fewer distractions ^[8]. Its guide doesn't describe any way to block an app.
• Plan what fills the time. In a trial where people blocked all mobile internet on their phones for two weeks, part of the benefit came from what they did instead: seeing people, exercising and getting outside ^[9].

Pick the lock for the reason

Locking an app for privacy takes three taps. Locking it against yourself takes a little more thought, because the person you're locking out knows the passcode. Start with one app and one rule this week, and make it firm enough to survive a tired evening, whether that's a passcode a friend keeps or a daily limit in Unrotten. If the scrolling itself is the problem, our guide on how to stop doomscrolling covers the habit behind it.