Games

How to block Stardew Valley on iPhone

Two ways, both on the phone in your hand. Option A is free and already built into iOS. Option B is Paused, if you'd rather it happen automatically and be harder to tap past.

Free · built into iOS

Option A — Apple Screen Time

No download, no subscription. Apple's own App Limits can block Stardew Valley specifically, and Downtime can switch it off by time of day.

  1. Turn Screen Time on. Open Settings → Screen Time. First time? Tap Turn On Screen Time, choose "This is My iPhone", and set a Screen Time passcode — pick four digits you won't type on reflex at 11pm.
  2. Add an App Limit. Still in Screen Time, tap App Limits → Add Limit.
  3. Select Stardew Valley. Apple sorts your apps into broad buckets and Stardew Valley sits with the Games apps. Tap the arrow beside Games to expand it and tick Stardew Valley only — or just type "Stardew Valley" into the search field at the top, which is faster. Tap Next.
  4. Set the allowance. Choose how long Stardew Valley gets each day. 30 minutes is a soft cap; 1 minute is effectively off. Tap Customize Days if weekends should be different, then tap Add.
  5. Turn on Block at End of Limit. Reopen the limit you just made and switch on Block at End of Limit. Without it, the "Ignore Limit" button hands the whole evening straight back to Stardew Valley.
  6. Add Downtime for a time-of-day block. A daily budget isn't the same as "off after 10pm". For that, go back to Screen Time → Downtime → Scheduled and set the window (10pm–7am is the classic), then check that Stardew Valley is not listed under Always Allowed. During Downtime it's blocked outright — there's no allowance left to burn.

The honest catch: it works, but it's four screens deep in Settings, the limit resets its own way, and if you know the passcode you can undo it in about six seconds. That's why so many people set an App Limit once and never think about it again.

Automatic · one tap

Option B — block Stardew Valley with Paused

Same Apple blocking engine underneath, built for the one job: getting Stardew Valley out of your evening without you having to decide again every night.

  1. Create a Block Schedule. Open Paused and create a Block Schedule — that's the recurring, automatic kind.
  2. Pick Stardew Valley. Choose Stardew Valley from your installed apps. While you're in there, add the rest of your games time-sinks too — Balatro, Bloons TD 6, Summoners War — because Stardew Valley is almost never the only one.
  3. Choose the window. Set the days and hours: 10pm–7am so the night is yours, 9–5 for work, or 7–9pm so dinner and the evening stay phone-free.
  4. Save it and forget it. That's the whole setup. From then on Stardew Valley turns itself off when the window starts and comes back on when it ends — no willpower, no remembering.
  5. Use a Focus session when you need Stardew Valley gone right now. One tap starts a Focus session: pick a length — 25 minutes, two hours, until dinner is over — and Stardew Valley stays locked until the timer runs out.
  6. Let the streak do the rest. Every day you keep the block stacks your streak. That's the part that keeps this working in week three, once the novelty of a fresh limit has worn off.

What it can see: nothing. Paused blocks through Apple's Screen Time (Family Controls) framework, so it can stop Stardew Valley from opening without reading your messages, your browsing, or anything you do inside the app. Your usage stays on your device.

Why Stardew Valley is hard to put down

An in-game day is about a quarter of an hour and every one ends with one more thing to plant, so bedtime slides an hour at a time.

Which is the point worth sitting with: you're not weak, you're up against a team of people whose job is the next tap. That's also why "I'll just be more disciplined" keeps failing and a dumb, boring wall — Stardew Valley simply doesn't open between 10pm and 7am — keeps working. Put the decision somewhere your 11pm self can't reach it.

And block the neighbours while you're there. Closing Stardew Valley and landing on the next games app in the same second is the most common way this falls apart — so block the cluster (Balatro, Bloons TD 6, Summoners War), not the single worst offender.

Get Paused — free on the App StoreGet →