Looking for a Brick alternative?

Brick pairs a small physical device with an app: tap your iPhone to the Brick to remove distracting apps and their notifications, tap again to bring them back. Paused is a different shape of app, so this is a comparison rather than a pitch — the table starts with what Brick does better.

Brick vs Paused, side by side

	Brick	Paused
Known for	Brick pairs a small physical device with an app: tap your iPhone to the Brick to remove distracting apps and their notifications, tap again to bring them back.	Block Schedules that switch your chosen apps off at set times and back on afterwards, one-tap Focus sessions for right now, and a streak that counts the days you kept the block.
Genuinely better at	Distance. The Brick can live in another room, and a block you have to walk to undo is the strongest friction on this page.	Paused needs nothing to tap: a Block Schedule turns the apps off by itself at the hours you set, and a Focus session does it right now.
Day to day it feels like	Blocking starts and ends with a real-world action — tapping a card or device, scanning a tag or code. The object out of reach is the point.	A small, boring wall. You pick the apps, pick the hours, and they stop opening — no coins, no plants, no hardware, no reasons to type. A calm Paused screen where the app used to be.

Stay with Brick if…

…you want a physical ritual and are happy to keep the device. Paused is software only.

We would rather you kept an app that fits than switched and quietly turned it off after a fortnight. A blocker you have disabled is not a blocker.

What Paused does not do

Said up front, because this is the part comparison pages usually leave out.

iPhone and iPad only — no Android, Mac or browser extension.
No daily usage allowance right now: Paused blocks by schedule or by session, not by “30 minutes a day” (Daily Limits are on hold because of an iOS 18 Screen Time bug that affects every app in this list).
Nothing to earn, grow or scan — if that mechanic is what keeps you honest, several apps above do it better.
Self-control for your own phone, not a tool for managing someone else’s.

What you get if you do switch

Block Schedules. Pick the apps, pick the days and hours — 10pm–7am, 9–5, dinner — and they switch off and back on by themselves. Set once.
Focus sessions. One tap blocks your chosen apps for 25 minutes, two hours, or until dinner is over.
A streak. Every day the block holds, the count goes up. That is the whole reward system.
A calm block screen. Open a blocked app and you get a quiet Paused screen, not the feed.
Privacy by construction. Paused blocks through Apple's Screen Time framework, which enforces the block without the app reading your messages, browsing or anything inside the apps. Usage stays on your phone.