How to block The Athletic on iPhone

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 The Athletic. Apple sorts your apps into broad buckets and The Athletic sits with the Entertainment apps. Tap the arrow beside Entertainment to expand it and tick The Athletic only — or just type "The Athletic" into the search field at the top, which is faster. Tap Next.
4. Set the allowance. Choose how long The Athletic 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 The Athletic.
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 The Athletic 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.

1. Create a Block Schedule. Open Paused and create a Block Schedule — that's the recurring, automatic kind.
2. Pick The Athletic. Choose The Athletic from your installed apps. While you're in there, add the rest of your sports time-sinks too — DAZN, PGA TOUR, Formula 1 — because The Athletic 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 The Athletic 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 The Athletic gone right now. One tap starts a Focus session: pick a length — 25 minutes, two hours, until dinner is over — and The Athletic 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 The Athletic from opening without reading your messages, your browsing, or anything you do inside the app. Your usage stays on your device.