How do I turn the deletion lock off?

What the lock is holding

The app deletion lock is an option you turn on for a term, and it is off unless you chose it. What it uses is a Screen Time restriction that is device wide: while it holds, no app on the phone can be removed, not just Fold'em. The row on the Shield tab says so in one line, and the spoken description says the same thing at more length.

It exists because deleting the app is the most obvious thing a person reaches for at the worst moment. The lock does not make that impossible forever. It makes it slow, and it makes it visible to the person you asked to hold you to this.

Turning it on is instant and needs nothing from the network: one tap applies the restriction to the phone straight away, and the record of your choice catches up on the server afterwards. Tightening is never made to wait. Loosening is the direction that has a wait on it.

The switch opens a window, it does not open the lock

Turning the switch off changes nothing on its own. It opens a sheet headed 72 hours to unlock, which states the moment the lock would come off as a weekday and a time, and names your keyholder as somebody who sees it today. The control that actually starts it is small, plain and last on the sheet, under everything else, and reads Start the 72 hour unlock.

You can attach a reason, from three fixed choices: freeing up space, changing phones, or other. There is no box to type in anywhere on this path, which is what keeps the promise that nothing you type ever reaches your keyholder.

Starting the window sends one call to the server, and the server stamps the moment it ends at 72 hours from its own clock. Everything after that is the server's: the phone renders the count from that stamp and keeps the restriction applied, unchanged, for the whole window. Changing the phone's clock, turning it off or reinstalling the app moves none of it. Asking twice does not start a second window either: a second request returns the running window's original time.

These 72 hours are the deletion lock's own window. They are not the 72 hours after a keyholder approves an exit, not the Games category's 72 hours, and not the lapse window. Each is counted separately and none of them shortens another.

Keeping it locked

While the window runs, the row becomes a counting card with one control on it: Keep it locked. One tap ends the window and the lock simply carries on. It stays available right up to the last moment, and it needs a connection, because the server is the one holding the window and the app will not pretend to have cancelled something it could not reach. Once the server has already granted the unlock, the cancel is refused rather than quietly ignored.

Turning the switch back on during a window does the same thing in one step: it cancels the window and locks it again. That also needs a connection, for the same reason.

What your keyholder sees

Three moments reach them, and they are facts rather than asks: the window opened, with the reason you picked; the window was cancelled; and the unlock completed. They arrive in the Circle history rather than as an email, and there is nothing for your keyholder to approve or refuse. Turning the lock back on afterwards is recorded too, so a feed that said the lock came off is never left standing when it has gone back on. This is item nine of the eleven things a keyholder can see.

If nobody holds your key, the window works exactly the same way and the record has no audience. Said plainly: a solo user with the lock off has no compensating control here beyond the silence of a phone that stops reporting, which turns the card dark after about 24 hours.

What this does not do

Turning the deletion lock off does not end your term, does not touch an exit, and does not unblock a single app or site. It is not a way out: the term keeps running and the shields stay exactly where they were. Deleting the app afterwards still does not end a term either, because the term lives on the server, and reinstalling brings the lock back exactly as it was rather than weaker. A window does not survive the term it belongs to: when a term ends the whole restriction goes with it, so there is nothing left to grant.