Indistractable vs Foqos

Foqos is free, open source, and unlocks with a QR code or NFC tag exactly as well as Indistractable does. If you want a blocker you control on your own, with a physical key and no subscription, use Foqos. You can stop reading here and you won't have missed anything.

The rest of this page is about one question: whether the thing Indistractable adds, another person, is something you need. For a lot of people it isn't, and $19.99 a year for a feature you won't use is a bad deal. For some people it's the only thing that has ever worked.

What Foqos is

Foqos is an iPhone app blocker built on Apple's Screen Time API, made by one developer and published under the MIT licence at github.com/awaseem/foqos. It's free, with no paid tier. No account, no ads, no tracking. The only in-app purchase is an optional $1.99 tip to the developer. It needs iOS 17.6 or later.

It blocks apps and websites in profiles. You start or end a session by tapping an NFC tag or scanning a QR code that you've left somewhere inconvenient. It has timers, smart breaks, habit tracking, and Live Activities so a running session shows on your lock screen. Its own site publishes comparisons against Brick and Blok, and it's named in the pinned "State of the Dumbphone" thread on r/dumbphones. For a free tool, that's about as good a reputation as it gets.

Where the two are the same

Physical unlocking. QR and NFC aren't what makes Indistractable different, and we're not going to pretend they are. Both apps let you print a code or stick a tag somewhere that takes effort to reach, and both make ending a session early mean going to get it. Both run on the same Apple API and hit the same ceiling, which we'll get to. If you're comparing the two on the physical key alone, there's nothing between them, and Foqos is free.

Where they differ

Nothing on the Foqos site or in its code mentions an accountability partner, or any way for someone else to approve an unlock, and it doesn't have a strict mode that stops you ending a session or deleting the app. Everything that unlocks Foqos is something you hold: the tag, the code, the phone.

Indistractable adds a second person. You nominate someone, and when you want to end a Strict session early you can email them a request instead of fetching the code. They approve it from their own phone with a click, no app needed, and your session ends. In Hardcore mode you have to ask them, and their yes isn't enough on its own. You still need to scan the code or tap the tag afterwards. The object stops the reflex, the person stops the plan, and Hardcore needs both.

That's the whole difference. A subscription, an account and a second person, against free, no account and just you.

The objection that applies to both

When Foqos was discussed on Hacker News, the sharpest criticism was that a software unlock is still a software unlock. A tag across the room is theatre if you're prepared to delete the app, and the Screen Time API lets you delete the app. That's right, and it applies to Indistractable's QR and NFC unlocks just as much. Apple's API lets an app shield other apps and lift the shield. It doesn't let an app stop you removing it, or stop you switching off its permission in Settings. Every iOS blocker is advisory. Neither Foqos nor Indistractable can truly stop you once you've made up your mind, and you should be suspicious of any app that says it can.

So how do you answer that? Two ways. First, most of the time you're not that determined. Your thumb moves before your brain does, and thirty seconds of walking to the tag is enough to stop it. If that's you, Foqos does the job and the criticism doesn't matter. Second, sometimes you really have decided, and then no object will stop you, because you can just walk to it. The only thing that gets in the way of a decision is another person. A person can't stop you deleting the app any more than a tag can. But now breaking the block means asking someone, hearing no, and doing it anyway. That's a very different thing from tapping a button. It's the whole case for Indistractable over Foqos. If it doesn't sound like you, use Foqos.

Side by side

"Not that we could find" means we looked on the Foqos site and in its code and couldn't find it. It doesn't mean it isn't there.

You should use Foqos instead if

• You're breaking a habit, not an addiction. If all you need is a pause long enough to remember you didn't want to open the app, a tag across the room gives you that.
• You don't want a subscription. Foqos costs nothing, and its developer has chosen not to add a paid tier. Paying $19.99 a year for a feature you won't use is a waste.
• There's nobody you'd want to ask. The partner idea only works if there's someone on the other end whose opinion you'd rather not face. If that person doesn't exist, it's dead weight.
• You want to read the source. Foqos is MIT-licensed and the whole app is on GitHub. Indistractable isn't open source.
• You're on iOS 17. Foqos runs on 17.6 or later. Indistractable needs iOS 18.

Indistractable is worth $19.99 a year if

• You've already beaten a solo blocker. If you've used Foqos, Brick, Screen Time or something like them and found yourself walking to the tag anyway, an object isn't the missing piece. A person might be.
• There's someone willing to hold the key. A partner, a flatmate, a parent, a friend who's heard you complain about this. They don't need the app. They get an email and click approve, or don't.
• You want Hardcore mode. A session that can't end without that person's yes and then a physical unlock as well is the strictest thing Apple's API allows, and we haven't found another blocker that offers it.

Either way, both are free to try. Foqos is free full stop, and Indistractable has a 7-day trial before you pay anything. The full field is on iPhone app blockers compared.

More comparisons

• iPhone app blockers comparedNine blockers side by side: physical unlock, partner approval, both at once, and price.
• Brick alternatives for iPhoneWhat each option actually stops, and what two years costs.
• App blockers where someone else holds the keyImpulse, LockPact, AppBlock and Indistractable, each on its own terms.