Fold'em
  1. Help
  2. Blocking
Blocking

What does the Games category shield do?

Updated September 2026

It blocks every app in the App Store's Games category on your phone, including ones you install later, so a new betting app filed as a game cannot get past the list you picked. It is off until you seal it on the Shield tab, and sealing it takes one pass through Apple's own picker. Switching it off starts a wait of 72 hours, and only after that wait do the games open. That wait is the one thing in Fold'em your phone times for itself, because the Games switch was never the server's to hold.

How the category shield holds

Screen Time can shield a whole App Store category as well as the individual apps you picked. Fold'em asks it to shield Games, because that is the category a sportsbook or casino app is most often filed under. A game you install next month is caught by the category the moment it lands, without you opening Fold'em.

The seal itself is picked through Apple's own picker, the same one the apps come from, and it is added to what you already sealed rather than replacing it. Your picked apps cannot fall out of the seal because you added the category. The switch only ever tightens: turning it on when it is already on changes nothing, and it refuses to arm at all if the pass came back with no category in it, because a flag with nothing behind it would claim a block that is not there.

Why the app asks you to check the word Games

What Apple's picker hands back is opaque. Fold'em can see that a category was ticked and count how many, and it cannot read which one, so it cannot confirm on its own that you ticked Games rather than Social or Entertainment. Two checks stand in for the one it cannot make. If nothing new came back, the row says Games is not ticked yet and asks you to turn the switch on and try again. If more than one new category came back, it refuses the pass and asks you to tick only Games. Between them, the row draws the name the operating system gives what you ticked, and asks you to read it: that reading is the only place the word Games is actually confirmed.

A category ticked in the apps pass instead is dropped rather than saved, and the row points you at this switch, because a category token staged through the apps flow is one the shield would never enforce.

The category release, drawn against every other release Two roads. On the top road, every other release: the phone asks, the server decides, and the phone applies what the server says. On the bottom road, the one exception: the Games category switch is turned off, a 72 hour ring fills on the phone's own clock, and the Games tile unlocks. A dashed line from the switch to the server is marked never asked. EVERY OTHER RELEASE The phone asks foldem.app decides The phone applies never asked for this one THE ONE EXCEPTION Switch it off 72 h Counted on the phone Games open again
Every other release in Fold'em is decided on the server and applied by the phone. The Games category is the one exception: its 72 hour wait is counted on the phone's own clock, and it releases the category and nothing else.

Sealing it, and starting the wait

  1. Open the Shield tab

    The tab shows the two layers as a pair: the apps you sealed and the web shield. Below them, under More protection, sits the Games category row, off until you seal it.

    The Shield tab: the web tile reading ON over Sites never load, the apps tile reading 7 apps blocked, and the More protection rows below them.

    The Shield tab, category row off

  2. Seal the Games category

    Turn the switch on. Apple's picker opens with your sealed apps already ticked inside it, headed with the one instruction that matters here: tick Games, then Done. The row then reads as ticked and waiting on Save, and nothing is enforced until you press Save at the foot of the tab and confirm the alert, which names the consequence and the date your term ends. Once saved the row reads Sealed, with the price of undoing it written underneath.

    The Shield tab with the Games category row sealed, its sub reading "Sealed. Turning it off takes a 72 hour wait," below the App deletion lock row.

    Sealed

  3. Switching it off starts the wait

    Turning the switch off raises a confirm headed Release the Games category, whose message says the games open again after a 72 hour wait and that you can keep the seal at any point before it ends. Cancel is the easy default and Start the wait is the small control. Take it and the row is replaced by a counting card: the hours and minutes left, the line until games open again, and one button reading Keep it sealed, which is the only way back.

    The Shield tab with the Games category row replaced by an amber counting card reading 71h 58m over "until games open again" and a Keep it sealed button.

    Counting the release

The one release your phone times for itself

Everywhere else in Fold'em the server decides when something opens and the phone only applies what it is told. The Games category is the single exception, and it is allowed to be one for a narrow reason: that switch has never existed on the server. It has no field on the wire, no callable behind it and no server side rule that reads it, so there is no server decision for the phone to contradict.

The category release's 72 hours are counted against this phone's own clock, so moving the clock forward ends that one wait early, on any phone. That is friction rather than a wall, and it reaches only the Games category: the apps you picked, the web shield, the app deletion lock and your term are all untouched by it.

When the wait runs out, the phone clears the seal and the deadline together, writes the new configuration down first, and only then applies the same shield again without the category. If that write does not go through, nothing changes and the seal simply holds until the next time the app checks. In the moment between the deadline passing and the release landing, the row reads Opening the games and the category is still on, because a row that showed zero would be promising something the phone has not done yet.

What this does not do

It does not touch your picked apps, the web shield, the deletion lock, your term or an exit. It cannot catch an app filed outside Games, it cannot reach a second phone, and it cannot block a betting site, which is the web shield's job. A wait that is still running when your term completes does not fire: the release stands down once the term is over, and the choice offered on the term complete screen is the one that ends everything at once. Starting a new term mints a new configuration that carries no deadline, so a wait does not carry over into it either.

Still stuck? Email support@foldem.app and we answer within two working days.