Why blockers stop working

Read those and notice what none of them say. Nobody says the blocker failed to block. It blocked perfectly well, right up until they decided it should stop.

The person who installs it is not the person who removes it

You set up a blocker on a good day. Something has become clear to you, and the decision feels settled. Setting it up takes a minute and asks little of you, because right then you want what it does.

You take it off on a different sort of day, usually late, usually alone. The person tapping the switch has one thing in mind and knows where the switch is, because they put it there. Most blockers meet that person with a toggle and a box that asks “Are you sure?” You are sure. The box was not going to hold you, and it was not built to.

That is why a blocker can work for weeks and then stop. Nothing about it changed. You did, for an evening, and it had no way of knowing.

Can you block a website so you can't access it?

Not completely, and be careful of anything that promises you can. A blocker that runs on your own phone can be removed by you, because it is your phone. Anyone who sets out to get round one will manage it.

That sounds like a reason to give up. It isn't, because the person who sets out to defeat a blocker, with effort and on purpose, is not who you are on most evenings. On most evenings it is a hand reaching for a switch before the rest of you has been consulted. That reach is a habit, and a habit can be slowed.

You cannot make the hard way impossible. You can make the easy way slow, and the easy way is most of the problem.

What makes a block hold

Four things. None of them is a stronger lock.

Your own reason, shown back to you. The first time you open B-Simple it asks one question: what brought you here? When you block a site it asks why. Try to lift the block and the first thing on the screen is your reason, as you wrote it. A box asking “Are you sure?” is a stranger with a form. Your own sentence from the day you set it up is someone you know.

A wait you chose in advance. Ten minutes to an hour, chosen on the good day. The waiting screen is plain on purpose. Give someone something absorbing to look at and time passes faster, which would refund most of the wait. The app will not tell you when the wait ends, either. A notification saying you can unblock now would be a prompt to do the thing you were trying not to do, so there is none. In the app's words: nothing will notify you when it finishes. If you still want it then, come back.

Something to type at the end. Not a password and not a secret. A short phrase, in plain view, that takes long enough to be a decision.

A block that puts itself back. A block you have to remember to restore is a block that stays off. Unblock a site in B-Simple and it opens for fifteen minutes, then locks again by itself.

If you have failed at this before

Then you already know the install is the easy part, and you are right to be wary of anything that promises the problem away.

Two things are worth knowing. People who study relapse keep finding the same thing: shame predicts more of it, and kindness towards yourself predicts less. That is why B-Simple does not keep score. There are no streaks to break and no reports to anyone. Nobody is notified of anything, and the only person who reads your reasons is you.

The other is smaller. When you sit through the wait and tap Keep it blocked, the app stays quiet. No congratulations and no badge. You made a decision, and the app got out of the way.

That is what B-Simple is: a blocker built for the evening you try to undo it. Free, on Android, and the blocking has no paid tier.

What no blocker can do

B-Simple blocks by domain name, so it cannot block a single page or a site reached by a raw IP address. A browser using its own secure DNS will bypass it, and Android allows one VPN at a time, so it cannot run alongside another. No list catches everything, and new sites appear faster than any list is updated.

Any blocker can be uninstalled. In B-Simple it is never obstructed, and there is a reason for that.

Ten minutes

Ten minutes is not a cure. It is a gentle space, long enough for the thing you were about to do to stop being the only thing in the room.

How it works shows the blocking running, on video, and says what the app can see and what it cannot.