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Once the permission is gone, ByIntent cannot step in when you open an app — and it will not pretend otherwise. A “Rules are paused” screen comes to the front, and the block screen says the same thing. Three steps to restore it:

1. Open system Settings
2. Screen Time → ByIntent
3. Turn on “Allow”

When you come back, your guard list is restored automatically — you do not have to walk through the app picker again — and recorded data is unaffected. This is an iOS permission boundary; ByIntent will not and cannot work around it. If you turned it off on purpose, just ignore that screen.

Tap the secondary button “Emergency pass” on the block screen. The subtitle becomes “Noted. Tap again in N sec to open 5 min · Pass k of 3 this week”. Wait it out, tap again, and you get 5 minutes.

• Always 5 minutes, never extendable; the same app cannot be passed again within 30 minutes.
• The weekly budget is 1, 3 or 5 — you choose in settings, default 3. Inside the budget the wait is 30 seconds.
• Past the budget you can still get through, it just takes longer: 2 min → 10 min → 30 min, reset daily, capped at 30 minutes so it never becomes “unavailable”.
• Nothing has to be justified. After the pass ends, a notification you can simply ignore asks what those 5 minutes were for (work / family / travel / other).

Those seconds of waiting are the entire point of the feature: they separate “tapped out of habit” from “I actually need this”. The pass never disappears and never goes behind a paywall.

Settings → Commitment mode, and flip the main switch back. It immediately reads “Turns off on X · Commitment mode still applies until then” — that is, it really goes off 24 hours later.

This is not about keeping you. The whole function of commitment mode is to let you, now, close a door on you, later; if the impulsive version of you could switch it off in one second, it would not exist. Turning it on is instant, turning it off waits — the asymmetry always leans towards the stricter side.

Levels 2 and 3 are self-declarations (set “Don’t Allow Deleting Apps” in the system, mirror your key rule into system Screen Time). ByIntent cannot read those switches and cannot verify them, so those two ticks can be undone at any time, with immediate effect — a declaration you cannot take back would only push people to lie their way out of it.

Because unchecking is a loosening, and loosening takes 24 hours. Until then that app stays guarded, and the screen says so: “N removals take effect at X · your current rules stand until then”.

The other direction — adding an app to the list — is a tightening, and applies at once.

This rule closes a hole. If list changes took effect immediately, “whatever I feel like scrolling, I’ll just uncheck it” would sail straight past the two-step wait, the weekly budget and commitment mode all at once. The one exception is the three-step first run — you are still setting things up there, so every change has to count immediately.

Apps on the allow list are never blocked by any rule at any time and never need an emergency pass. So adding one is a loosening and waits 24 hours, while removing one is a tightening and applies at once. The direction is the opposite of the guard list, judged by the same test: whichever way is stricter is the one that happens immediately.

Setting up the allow list for the first time waits too. Otherwise “clear the allow list, then add back the one app I want” would be the standard bypass recipe.

One more thing: iOS only supports excluding apps. Categories and websites ticked on the allow list will not take effect, and the app says so explicitly. Phone, Messages and emergency calls are never limited by Screen Time in the first place, so there is no need to add them.

Settings → Data & deletion → Delete all history. It asks once for confirmation and cannot be undone; rules and the guard list are kept.

To keep a copy first, use “Export events” on the same screen. It writes the raw events.jsonl file, whose fields are listed one by one in section 2 of the privacy policy.

To clear the rules as well, just delete the app — iOS removes the sandbox and the App Group container with it. Export and deletion are free, forever.

Because iOS does not hand over a list of apps — it hands over opaque tokens. Only the system knows what you ticked in the picker (FamilyActivityPicker). The tokens we receive cannot be turned back into names and cannot be constructed, which is also why we cannot pre-tick anything for you and why we do not detect what you have installed.

So you see phrasing like “4 apps · 2 categories”, plus app labels the system renders itself. This is Apple’s privacy design and it applies to every app of this kind.

ByIntent follows the system language. To give this one app a different language, use the iOS per-app language setting:

1. Open system Settings
2. Scroll down to ByIntent
3. Tap Language and choose English or 简体中文

The Settings → Language row inside the app is the shortcut there — one tap takes you straight to it. The block screen follows the same choice.

The iOS “Social” category includes messaging apps such as WeChat and QQ. Tick the whole group and you have blocked the people in your life too — that is not a boundary, that is being cut off.

Two ways to handle it, pick one:

• Recommended: inside the Social category, tick the feed-based apps one by one (Weibo, RED, Zhihu, Instagram, X…) and leave the messengers alone.
• If you really want the whole Social group, put the messengers on the “Essential apps” allow list so iOS excludes them directly — remembering that additions to the allow list take 24 hours.

Also worth knowing: Channels and mini games run inside WeChat itself, and system Screen Time cannot manage them separately. That line is in the app’s capability transparency screen too.

Something did happen — the title changed to “Noted.” and the subtitle now tells you how many seconds are left: “Tap ‘Open’ again in 10 sec to enter”. That is the two-step design: the first tap only registers, and a second tap after the short wait is what actually lets you in.

If the subtitle did not change, the block screen usually just has not redrawn yet. Leave the app and open it once more.

No. “End early” is an ordinary action: tap it, confirm once, and your usual rules come back immediately. The session is recorded as “ended early” and nothing is cleared.

ByIntent has no streaks, no streak resets, no public leaderboards and no line written to make you feel small. Emergency passes stay available throughout a focus session.