How do I reach SOS from a blocked app?
Updated September 2026
Press the second button on the block screen: it is the escape, and it opens Fold'em. Where it lands is a choice you made in advance, and the default is the SOS screen. The escape carries up to three destinations; the other two open the dialer on your keyholder or on the helpline for your country. Pressing it also records one blocked attempt, which is the part of the moment your keyholder can see.
The two buttons on the wall
When you open a sealed app, iOS draws Fold'em's block screen over it instead of the app. On each of the six walls Fold'em ships it carries a line, a mark and two buttons. The first is the calm dismiss and on the default wall it reads Stay folded: the app stays closed and nothing is recorded. The second is the escape, and it is deliberately the quieter of the two, because the prominent button on a wall should be the one that keeps the wall up.
The escape cannot dial and it cannot open a link. A block screen extension is allowed to do exactly four things when a button is pressed, and only one of them opens the app that owns the shield, so every destination below is something the app runs after it opens.
Where the escape lands
The escape carries up to three destinations, and pressing and holding it shows the rest as a menu. A plain press always fires and always resolves to the one you chose.
- Ride it out is the default and the universal fallback. It opens the SOS screen. It depends on nothing, so it can never become unavailable.
- Call your keyholder opens the dialer on the number stored for them. It needs a keyholder with a name and a usable number.
- Call a helpline opens the dialer on the number for your country. It needs a resolved organisation that has a phone number.
A destination whose data has gone falls back to Ride it out and its label falls back to SOS, because a wall offering to call somebody who has left the circle is worse than a wall that says SOS. You choose which destination the wall carries in Settings, under Block screen, then Customize: tapping the escape button on the preview opens the three, with a tick on the one in use. A destination with nothing behind it is shown dimmed rather than hidden, so the screen never quietly drops a choice you could have.
What happens when you press it
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Press the second button
The block screen writes one blocked attempt and one small routing note into the space it shares with the app, then asks iOS to open Fold'em. The open happens whether or not either note was written, because failing to record must never fail to open.
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Fold'em opens and reads the note
The app reads the note once, deletes it, and acts on it only if it is less than five minutes old and your protection is still on. A note read while nothing is blocked is thrown away rather than acted on, so a stale press cannot open anything later.
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It lands where you chose
On the default setting you arrive on the SOS screen, and the app waits up to two seconds for your circle to load before it reads a call destination. If your circle has not answered by then it takes Ride it out rather than guessing, so the wrong number is never dialled.
Where the default escape lands
What is recorded
One press of the escape is one blocked attempt, whichever destination it names, so no way out of the wall is quieter than another. That count is what reaches your keyholder as a number of attempts, never the app you opened and never anything you typed. Pressing Stay folded records nothing.
What this does not do
The escape does not unlock the app you were opening, and it does not shorten any wait. It never places a call by itself: on the two calling destinations, iOS opens its own dialer with the number filled in and you press call. It reaches only this phone, so a blocked app on a second device has no escape at all. It cannot appear on a wall that iOS never drew: with Screen Time permission withdrawn there is no block screen and no button on it. And it is not guaranteed to be there on a wall you wrote yourself, because a wall built from your own words can be saved without the escape button; the six walls Fold'em ships always carry it.
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