News

How to block The New York Times 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 The New York Times 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 The New York Times. Apple sorts your apps into broad buckets and The New York Times sits with the Information & Reading apps. Tap the arrow beside Information & Reading to expand it and tick The New York Times only — or just type "The New York Times" into the search field at the top, which is faster. Tap Next.
  4. Set the allowance. Choose how long The New York Times 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 New York Times.
  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 New York Times 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 The New York Times with Paused

Same Apple blocking engine underneath, built for the one job: getting The New York Times 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 The New York Times. Choose The New York Times from your installed apps. While you're in there, add the rest of your news time-sinks too — BBC News, NBC News, Reuters — because The New York Times 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 New York Times 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 New York Times gone right now. One tap starts a Focus session: pick a length — 25 minutes, two hours, until dinner is over — and The New York Times 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 New York Times from opening without reading your messages, your browsing, or anything you do inside the app. Your usage stays on your device.

Why The New York Times is hard to put down

Great writing is the trap: one article becomes six, and the Games tab is right there.

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 — The New York Times 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 The New York Times and landing on the next news app in the same second is the most common way this falls apart — so block the cluster (BBC News, NBC News, Reuters), not the single worst offender.

Get Paused — free on the App Store Get →