An app blocker for sleep

The 1am spiral rarely starts at 1am. It starts at 10:30 with one harmless check, and the feed does the rest — because the feed has no bedtime. There is always one more video, and your tired brain is the easiest audience it will get all day.

The fix is not more discipline at your most depleted hour. It is removing the decision entirely: a blocking session that starts at night and runs until morning. When the apps simply are not available, the phone becomes boring, and a boring phone is the best sleep aid ever invented.

How people set it up with Lerf: start a session around your wind-down time — there is an "until morning" duration for exactly this — with your scroll apps blocked. Strict Mode means no talking yourself back in at midnight. Optional ambient sounds play while everything stays locked, so the phone can still help you fall asleep without being able to keep you awake. Many people stick a Lerf Tag on the nightstand: tap it as you plug the phone in, and the night is decided.

What changes is not just the hours. Mornings stop starting with a regret scroll, because the apps are still locked when you wake — the first minutes of the day belong to you again.

Lerf is free on iPhone, with no account and nothing to check. It is designed to be set down — which, at night, is the entire point.