Otto's Free App Blocker

A free companion to Cold Turkey

Cold Turkey is the best desktop blocker there is and it does not run on your phone at all. This page is not really an argument against it. If you already use it, the gap it leaves is the device you are probably reading this on.

Cold Turkey Blocker is Windows and macOS only, sold as a one-off Pro licence rather than a subscription, and one purchase covers every personal computer you own. Its pricing page loads the figure in the browser and third-party sources disagree on it, so check the site rather than trusting a number quoted anywhere else, including here. The free tier blocks websites and runs timed blocks.

	Cold Turkey	Otto
Price	One-off Pro licence, no subscription	Free, all of it
Phone	No, desktop only	Yes, iPhone and Android
Windows and Mac	Yes	No
Blocks applications	Yes, on desktop	Yes, on phone
Daily time limit	Yes, allowances	Yes
Scheduled hard block	Yes, weekly schedule	Yes
Genuinely hard to bypass	Yes, forced restart and typed text	Yes, locked settings
Account required	No, a product key	No

Where Cold Turkey is the better buy

For a computer, nothing else here is close. It blocks executables, folders, window titles, whole domains and the entire web if you ask it to, and the unlock methods run to typing out long randomised text or restarting the machine. Pay once, install on every machine you own, no renewal.

Where Otto is the better fit

Otto is not competing with it. Cold Turkey cannot see your phone, and the phone is where the hour goes. Run Cold Turkey on the laptop and Otto on the phone and you have both halves covered for the price of the licence alone.

This is one of fourteen paid app blockers compared side by side on the alternatives page. There is also a guide to cutting phone use covering the setup no app does for you.

Otto is free, on both stores

No paid tier, no trial that expires, no account. There is a tip jar in the settings and that is the whole business model.