A commitment-based app blocker
Willpower was never the problem.
Every scroll is engineered by thousands of people whose job is your attention. You don’t out-discipline that. Obsto removes the fight by removing the choice.
The seal holds.
Launching July 26, 2026
II · The Reckoning
Do the math nobody wants to do.
Pick your daily screen time. The numbers below are computed, not invented: hours a day times 365, divided by 24. Full days, a 55-year horizon. No scare constants.
13 YEARS.
At 5.5 hours a day you will spend 84 days this year inside this screen. Over the next 55 years, 13 years of your one life. Awake years. Gone.
Computed as hours × 365 ÷ 24. The same model the app shows you, from your own answers.
Sealed under your terms, most of it comes back.
Two kept hours a day is 30 days a year. Reclaim up to 4 of those years, one kept hour at a time.
Not one year more.
And the money?
You know what your hour is worth. Obsto asks $59.99 a year, ₹2,999 in India, after a 7-day free trial. Two reclaimed hours a day against one coffee a month. You do that math too.
The Seal
Built to hold when your willpower doesn’t.
Kill the app.
Still sealed.
Reboot the phone.
Still sealed. Schedules re-arm themselves.
Airplane mode.
Still sealed. Enforcement is local-first, it needs no network.
Wind the clock forward.
The timer doesn’t blink.
How? That stays our business.
Three tiers of serious.
Soft
End anytime. Gentle friction for light days.
Lock
Sealed until the timer. One Emergency Pass a week, and it burns session time.
Hard
No exit. The seal lifts when the time is served.
Strictness is never premium. Every tier, in every state, for every user.
The First Week
Your first week, kept.
Tonight
Your first sealed hour. You feel it hold.
Day 3
Your streak stands. Kept days start to stack.
Day 7
Your first week ledgered, about 14 hours reclaimed, in writing.
Private by architecture, not by promise.
Enforcement runs on your phone and needs no network. Obsto never records which apps you tried to open or how often. On iPhone, Apple’s own picker means we cannot even see which apps you chose. No ads. No data brokers. No selling, ever.
What it is
What is Obsto?
A commitment-based app blocker. You choose what gets sealed and for how long, and Obsto enforces it. It is a blocker that actually blocks, not a screen-time chart that watches you fail politely.
How is this different from a screen-time tracker?
Trackers report. Obsto enforces. When a focus session is running or a schedule is active, the apps you sealed are blocked, and depending on the tier you chose, there is no talking your way out.
Which platforms does it run on?
iPhone (iOS 16 or later) and Android. The two versions are built natively on each platform’s own enforcement machinery.
Is Obsto a parental-control or surveillance app?
No. Obsto is a tool you point at yourself, on your own device, under your own terms. It is not built for monitoring other people, and it is not a medical or clinical product.
Does it block websites too?
On iPhone, yes, website blocking ships alongside app blocking. On Android, website blocking is not available yet, and we will not pretend otherwise.
How the seal works
What happens when I try to open a blocked app?
You meet the block screen instead of the app: sealed by you, with your own reason looking back at you, and the time remaining.
What are the three tiers?
Soft ends whenever you want, it is gentle friction. Lock seals the session until the timer ends, with the weekly Emergency Pass as the only escape. Hard has no exit at all, the seal lifts when the time is served.
What is the Emergency Pass?
A once-a-week pass for Lock sessions. It grants up to 60 minutes of grace, and that grace burns out of your committed session time, the end time never moves. Life happens; bailing still costs.
Can I just force-quit the app to get around a block?
No. Blocking survives force-quitting the app, rebooting the phone, and going fully offline. It also ignores clock changes: winding the time forward does not end a session early.
So is it impossible to bypass?
No blocker on a phone you own can honestly claim that, and we won’t. You can still uninstall Obsto or dig through OS settings to revoke its permissions. Obsto is built so that in the moment of weakness, the lazy path is to keep your commitment, not break it.
What is the Never Allowed list?
A list that is blocked around the clock, no session needed. For the apps or sites you have decided simply do not belong in your life right now.
Do schedules work if I never open the app?
Yes. Recurring schedules arm and enforce themselves even with the app closed, and they re-arm after a reboot.
Does blocking work offline?
Yes, fully. Enforcement is local-first and needs no network at all.
Will it drain my battery?
Obsto leans on the operating system’s own enforcement hooks instead of running a hungry background process, so its footprint stays small.
What happens if I break a commitment?
The seal cracks, it does not shatter. The record stands, honestly, and tomorrow is still yours. No shame texts, no guilt mechanics.
Permissions and privacy
Why does Obsto need Screen Time access on iPhone?
That is Apple’s own mechanism for blocking apps. Apple’s picker hands us opaque tokens, so we cannot even see which apps you selected. What we keep is a single coarse number, your day’s total screen time, for your own ledger. Never per-app detail.
Why does Obsto need Accessibility access on Android?
It is how Obsto sees which app is open, only to show the block screen for apps you chose. It never reads your screen content, and what it sees never leaves your device.
What data do you collect?
An email address to sign in, your onboarding answers, subscription status, the focus sessions, schedules and, on Android, the app lists you create, basic product analytics, and a coarse daily screen-time total. Payments are handled entirely by Apple or Google, we never see your card. No location, no contacts, no messages, no browsing history, no advertising identifier. The full list lives in our Privacy Policy.
Do you sell data or run ads?
Never. No ads, no data brokers, no third-party advertising or tracking. The blocker business only works if you trust it.
Can I delete my account and data?
Yes, directly inside the app, or by writing to privacy@obsto.app. Deletion removes your data from our active systems.
What is the minimum age?
Obsto is for ages 13 and up.
Pricing and account
What does Obsto cost?
One plan: Obsto Premium at $59.99 a year (₹2,999 in India), with a 7-day free trial. No payment due at the start of the trial.
Will I get charged without warning?
We remind you two days before your free trial converts, the same promise the paywall prints. Renewals after that are managed by Apple and Google; you can cancel anytime in your store settings.
How do I cancel?
In your App Store or Google Play subscription settings, anytime, at least 24 hours before the period ends. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription, that is how the stores work, so cancel first.
What happens when my subscription lapses?
Obsto keeps working with one active rule and today’s history. Every tier, including Hard, stays available. Strictness is never premium, and a blocker you can bribe isn’t a blocker.
Can I get a refund?
Purchases run through Apple and Google, so refunds follow their processes: report a problem with an App Store purchase, or request a refund through Google Play.
Not one year more.
Seven days free. The seal stands on July 26.