A strict app blocker you cannot talk your way out of
Most apps advertise a strict mode and mean a delay. Wait thirty seconds, tap twice, type a sentence, and the block comes off anyway. Otto's Strict is one-way. After ten days it can be turned on and never turned off again, and a rule can be changed only by spending something you had to earn.
What Strict actually does
- Ten days of training first. For the first ten days Strict goes on and off freely. It is a practice run, deliberately, because a promise you make in the first hour of owning an app is not a promise you understand yet.
- From day eleven it is one-way. Off is still a choice you can make. Turning it on is not reversible. The switch wears a padlock from that point.
- A rule cannot be deleted while Strict is on. Deleting a rule removes the block altogether, which is exactly the escape hatch Strict exists to close.
- An edit costs a credit. You earn one credit for every day you leave your rules alone. With Strict on, changing a rule spends one. No credits, no change, and today's credit is never bankable, so there is no way to earn one on the spot at one in the morning.
- Super Strict, if that is still too easy. It opens on day eleven and makes each edit cost ten credits. Turning it on is free; turning it off costs ten. Flicking it off to buy a cheap edit costs eleven, so it is never worth doing.
Why a countdown is not strict
A friction delay works on the reflex, the unthinking reach for the phone, and it works well, which is why one sec built a whole product on it. It does nothing at all against a decision. If you have decided you are going to open Instagram, thirty seconds of waiting is thirty seconds of waiting, and you will spend it.
What actually holds is a rule your past self set that your present self cannot cheaply undo. That is the only mechanism on this page. Everything else is decoration.
What it cannot do, honestly
No app blocker on either phone can stop you uninstalling it. Otto cannot, Screen Time cannot, and any app that claims otherwise on iPhone is describing something Apple does not allow. On Android, Lock Me Out goes furthest with uninstall protection; Otto does not do that.
What Strict removes is the two-second edit, the quiet raise of a limit from fifteen minutes to forty-five that you will not remember making tomorrow. Deleting the app is a decision you have to actually make, out loud, and that turns out to be most of the battle.
Both phones, no paid tier
Strict, Super Strict, edit credits, the daily budget, the hard schedule and greyscale are all in the free app on iPhone and Android. There is no pro version holding the strict part hostage, which is the usual arrangement. See what fourteen paid blockers charge.
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.
