Shrike
Get Shrike

Tuesday · day 9 with Shrike

Shrike has no unlock button.

It gives the apps that eat your day a daily limit. Use it up and the app closes until 04:00, and tomorrow its limit is a step shorter.

Get Shrike See how a night goes

For iPhone · iOS 17.4 or later · the first week is free

The board shows what's closing, and when it opens.

Every tracked app gets a row like a train: its limit, the minutes left on flap cells, and a status a station would print. Five minutes before the end, FINAL CALL. After it, the app is closed until the new day starts.

You don't set the limits app by app. For the first week Shrike only watches, then it starts each app where your own week put it.

CClips 30 Till 04:00
SSnaps 20 Final call
FForum 45 Open
CChirp 45 Open
Demo apps and minutes. On your iPhone, iOS draws your real ones.

Snaps is off duty

🔥 8 clean days in a row · 🪶 685
Used its 20 minutes. Opens at 04:00 with 10.

“The days are long, but the years are short.”
— Gretchen Rubin

Until tomorrow

The only button closes the app.

When an app is out of minutes, iOS shows Shrike's block screen. It has one button, and it takes you away from the app. Its words change every visit, so it never reads like a scolding.

  • Snooze for 15 minutes
  • Type a reason to continue
  • Just this once

Pick up to three reasons you're doing this, and the block screen asks about one of them when you reach for a closed app.

And every change in Settings waits for tomorrow, so nothing you do in a weak moment at 21:52 loosens tonight's lock.

A new day starts, and everything opens.

Closed apps come back with their new limit. You choose the hour; 04:00 is where it starts, so a late night still counts as the day before.

Use it up, and tomorrow's limit is a step shorter.

Each app sits on a ladder: 45 minutes, 30, 20, 10, then closed all day. Every day it uses its whole limit, it steps down one. Seven days under, it climbs one back.

A first slip in two weeks is gentler: two days under the lower limit, and it's back where it was.

Snaps is on 20 minutes.

1min
2min
3min
4min
5All day
Try it: Snaps is a demo app.

Leaving apps alone adds up.

A clean day is a day nothing hit its limit. Clean days grow your run, earn feathers and grow your bird, from an egg to an elder in a scarf. Levels are never lost, and the bird never dies. Each month opens with the last one told back.

Run Feathers
  1. Eggday 0
  2. Hatchling3 clean days
  3. Nestling7
  4. Fledgling14
  5. Juvenile30
  6. Hunter50
  7. Adult100
  8. Migrant200
  9. Elder365
A clean dayNothing hits its limit
Clean in a tight weekEvery limit a step shorter, by choice. On top of the clean day
An app earns time backIt moves a step back up
A new levelYour shrike grows
A focus roundEach one you finish
The block screen never pays: feathers are for staying away, not for reaching.

Each week ends on a perch.

Fifty feathers in a week and your bird climbs a branch. Under 25, it drops one. Monday starts clean.

Hedge perchClimbs to Thorn when the week ends
25holds 50climbs
  1. Twig
  2. Hedge
  3. Thorn
  4. Treetop
  5. Sky

Bring a flock, up to eight friends.

One shared board through iCloud: clean days, runs and this week's feathers. Never which apps, never how many minutes. No Shrike server, no accounts, no strangers.

Start a pact and the flock takes a tight week together: every limit a step shorter for seven days. A pact day only counts if everyone in it stayed clean.

SamThorn perch12
YouHedge perch9
NoorHedge perch4
TomášTwig perch1
Demo flock. Only feathers and runs show, never apps or minutes.

Still worth it?

Another 5 minutes in Forum. Keep going if you meant to: it asks again in 5 minutes. Today's limit is 45.

Close it 👋 Keep going

Every five minutes, a question.

Five minutes into a tracked app, it stops and asks: keep going, or close it? The scroll breaks, and you choose on purpose.

Keep going only spends minutes the app still has today. It never adds one, so the limit closes the app right where it would have. Close it and come back later, and it asks again.

Every 3, 5, 10 or 15 minutes, or off. None in the last five minutes before a limit; the final call has that.

Need an hour?
Close everything.

Start a focus run and every tracked app closes for 25 minutes, with five-minute breaks between rounds. Each round you finish is +5 🪶.

Or close every tracked app until the day ends, with one tap and no tap to undo it. Quiet hours do it every evening on their own.

  3. Quiet hoursEvery tracked app closes, whatever minutes are left Till 07:00

The first week is free. Shrike only watches.

From day 8 the limits start closing apps, for members. Without a membership the ladder rests, and focus, the flock and your bird stay.

Family covers a child's iPhone too. You approve Shrike there as the parent, a passcode guards its Settings, and it can't be deleted without you.

A membership change never opens an app that's closed today. Like every loosening, it waits for the new day.

Learning weekDays 1 to 7, Shrike only watchesFree
Yearly Best valueJust $1.25 a month$/yr
Family Up to 6Everyone in your Family Sharing$/yr
MonthlyCancel anytime$/mo
LifetimePay once, keep it forever$
Prices in US dollars; the App Store shows yours.

Watches first. Then it's strict.

For a week Shrike only learns how you use your iPhone. After that, closed means closed, until 04:00.

Get Shrike

On the App Store · for iPhone · iOS 17.4 or later