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What is the block screen?

Updated September 2026

The block screen is what iOS draws over a sealed app instead of opening it. Fold'em ships seven of them, six written for a particular voice and a seventh you write yourself, and you choose which one your phone uses. Whichever you pick, the screen carries one line from that voice, drawn at random each time it appears, a button that keeps you out and a button that takes you into Fold'em. It cannot be dismissed into the app behind it, and it is the same screen a website you picked yourself lands on.

What is actually on the screen

When you tap a sealed app, iOS asks Fold'em's shield extension what to draw and puts that in front of you. The app is not opened, and it is not deleted: it stays where it was, behind the wall.

The wall carries a mark, one line of text, an optional day count and two buttons. The line comes from the voice you chose, and it is drawn at random from that voice's lines on every appearance, so the same wall does not read like a sign you stopped seeing after a week. The day count is derived at the moment the screen is configured, from an anchor baked into the wall's own file, which is why it rolls over at midnight without you opening Fold'em.

The first button keeps you out. On the default face it reads Stay folded. The second is the way out, and it does not open the app: it opens Fold'em, at the place you told it to. There are three destinations to choose from, Ride it out, which lands in SOS, a call to your keyholder, or a call to a helpline. A shield extension cannot dial and cannot open a link, so each of those is something the app does when you arrive, never something the wall does on its own.

What a sealed app does when you open it Two phones side by side. On the left, a home screen of app tiles with a ring around one sealed betting app being tapped. On the right, the same phone with Fold'em's block screen covering the whole display: the Fold'em mark, one line from the pack you chose, the day count since you sealed, and an SOS button. The tiles are still faintly visible underneath, because the app is covered and not deleted. YOU OPEN A SEALED APP A betting app you sealed F You asked to be kept out of this. Day 12 SOS The wall, every time One line from the pack you chose The day count, from the seal The app is still installed, only covered
Open a sealed app and the block screen lands over it: one line from the pack you chose and the day count since you sealed. The app is covered, never deleted.

Choosing which one you get

  1. Settings, then Block screen

    Under Preferences, the Block screen row shows the voice you are on. A fresh install reads Default.

    The Settings root with a Preferences group containing Notifications, Motivation, Haptics and a Block screen row reading Default.

    Settings, Preferences

  2. Page through the seven

    Each one is a phone wearing the wall, with the voice's name and one line about it underneath. Drag sideways to move between them and use the shuffle control in the frame to see another of that voice's lines. Select puts the wall on your phone.

  3. Customize, if you want the details

    Customize carries the shared settings: a Days folded switch, off unless you turn it on, and the SOS button's destination. It is also where My own words is written.

The seven voices

Six are written: Default, which says the minimum and gets out of the way; Roast me, cold and pointed at the plan rather than at you; Soft; No excuses; Make me laugh; and Keep me honest. The default face carries one sentence, "You set this to stay closed.", and the Fold'em wordmark as its mark; the other five carry an emoji instead.

The seventh is My own words. You write one emoji, a headline of up to 24 characters and a second line of up to 90, and you may remove either button and add it back. The ink is derived from the background by its brightness, so a light wall gets dark type without you choosing a colour. Your text never becomes a button label, because a label has to follow what the button does, and the escape can never be lost by accident.

Emptiness is legal. A wall with no mark, one line and no buttons is a wall the phone can draw. What is never legal is a broken one: if the file is missing, unreadable or empty, the extension falls back to its own compiled in Default face rather than handing iOS nothing, because nothing would make iOS draw its own Restricted screen and you would read that as Fold'em failing.

Websites land here too, and some do not

A website you ticked in Apple's picker is shielded the way an app is, so it lands on this same screen. The other two web layers do not: a domain the resolver stops never loads at all, and a domain on Screen Time's own site list shows Apple's restricted site page inside Safari. Three mechanisms, three different things on screen, and only one of them is this wall.

What this does not do

The block screen carries no date, no money figure and no countdown, and there is no code, no password and no button anywhere on it that opens the app. The day count is the only number it can carry and it is off unless you switch it on. A count of the times you tried is deliberately not shipped. Changing the voice changes what the wall says and nothing else: it does not touch what is blocked, your term, or the way out of one.

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