ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Brick is a $55 gadget that blocks you from accessing your most-used apps
- It helped me develop a greater relationship to my cellphone
- Its optimistic reinforcements work higher than rivals or Display Cut-off dates.
nov / 2025
Observe ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
As each facet of our working and social life is digitized, display habit has turn into much less an exception to our way of life and extra a extensively accepted attribute of it. I see this mostly once I ask my associates, household, and coworkers what number of hours a day they spend on their telephones. The solutions fluctuate from three to eight hours.
I common round 4 hours of my day on my cellphone, checking emails, responding to texts, scrolling social media, and checking the climate. That is 4 hours I may very well be spending studying a e book, writing an article, studying predict the climate, calling a cherished one, and doing something apart from checking the time suck and mind rot that’s social media websites and messaging apps.
Additionally: I gave up my iPhone for a dumbphone with no apps. A month later, here’s my take
Each October, as common daylight dwindles and my power ranges deplete, this sense of realized helplessness by the hands of know-how involves a head. I’ve no power to stand up from my mattress. It takes me some time to construct the braveness to transit to the fitness center. What do I do as a substitute? I sit on my mattress and I scroll.
I scroll via monetary recommendation posts telling me that I needs to be investing far more available in the market than I already am, I scroll via engagements and weddings my former classmates are celebrating, I scroll via reactionary content material strangers submit on the web for clicks, and I scroll via among the most sinister information my eyes can see and my mind can fathom. All this content material is jumbled in, and I let it wash over me like I am mendacity on the sands of a pathetic ocean.
As soon as I attain this level, I delete my social media apps. I attempt to put my cellphone in one other room whereas I work, eat, and do chores round the home. I create a stricter schedule and power myself to depart the home extra. Then, every week or two later, as soon as I’ve returned to my pure, steady, ripen, not rotten, mind, I redownload all these apps. Maybe it is just some weeks or months, however the cycle continues.
Additionally: 6 small steps I take to break my phone addiction – and you can too
I’ve tried the deadlines, the app blockers, and utilizing social media on a browser as a substitute of the app itself. So this October, I attempted one thing new. I had seen protection of the corporate Brick and its miracle-working device that successfully locks customers out of their high-demand apps. Individuals had claimed the minimalistic, magnetic dice gave them their time again. I will be the choose of that, I assumed to myself.
The parents at Brick despatched me a tool, which I instantly started testing upon reception and have been for the previous few weeks. TL:DR? This gadget has completed numbers on my relationship with my most addictive apps. This is how.
The way it works
Brick is a grey, magnetic sq. with a appropriate app. Upon downloading the app, an individual selects the apps they need to disable as soon as their cellphone is bricked. Brick makes use of NFC know-how, which can be present in contactless funds, digital wallets like Apple Pay, and safe entry controls, comparable to digital keycards used to realize entry into buildings, to allow and disable app use. Tapping the brick, or “bricking,” blocks using these apps till the cellphone is tapped as soon as once more and “unbricked.”
Additionally: 6 small steps I took to break my phone addiction – and you can too
You may arrange schedules to dam apps throughout particular occasions of the day and modes to dam sure sorts of apps. I started testing the product by making a mode that blocks my most-used apps, particularly Messages, Instagram, Fb, Threads, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Brick offers you 5 free “unbricks” you should utilize in an emergency, while you aren’t close to the bodily Brick.
My expertise ‘Bricking’ my iPhone
I have never arrange a schedule but, as a result of I am happy bricking my gadget upon my very own volition and unbricking once I have to verify messages or posts from associates. Bricking the gadget once I acknowledge my very own want for distance from my cellphone felt like a simple first step at curbing my cellphone habit. A schedule felt too stringent. I can see the scheduling characteristic changing into handier as soon as I’ve spent a number of weeks bricking my cellphone and developed much less of a reliance on recurrently checking it, of which I am nonetheless engaged on.
My cellphone utilization is the worst (and makes me really feel the worst) whereas I am at house. Scrolling via social media between subway stops or checking messages sometimes on the workplace is not my subject. It is the hours I spend losing as soon as I get house from a busy day of labor, or the time I spend losing away on the weekends that I may very well be dedicating to hobbies.
Additionally: I’ve tried many AI smart glasses in 2025 (including Meta Display) – these are the only ones I’d wear all day
In order that’s the place I primarily use the Brick. My roommates, nevertheless, have used the Brick earlier than studying on the park, they usually reported that it helped them focus longer. One Monday evening, I bricked my cellphone after which journal for 90 minutes, fully and completely undisturbed.
I really like bricking my cellphone earlier than bedtime, which, within the phrases of my roommate, looks like “shutting the house laptop down on the finish of the evening.” Sometimes, I will be mendacity in mattress and remembering I need to verify an app or ship a textual content.
Doing so would power me out of my mattress, down an extended hallway, and into the kitchen to unbrick my cellphone. It made me rethink my cellphone utilization choices.
Within the morning, after waking, I am going to go to my kitchen, the place my Brick is caught on the fridge, and unbrick my cellphone. This provides me round an hour earlier than work, throughout which I can atone for messages and the day by day happenings.
Additionally: These new sleep earbuds include a free year of Calm to help you drift off – and stay there
Then, as soon as I start work, I brick my cellphone once more. After not less than an hour of zero distractions, I am going to reward myself with a fast unbrick. I verify my messages or scroll for a couple of minutes and rebrick. It is just like the Pomodoro impact, however for cellphone habit.
Working with out the fixed pings or easy accessibility to social media jogs my memory of the productiveness I might have whereas doing my homework on an airplane earlier than Wi-Fi turned obtainable — that undeterred, distraction-free type of productiveness and clearheadedness that comes with disconnection from the surface world.
Why it really works for me
Brick makes entry to my most-used apps a privilege I really feel like I need to earn via endurance, somewhat than one thing I can take without any consideration at any time when I might like. It additionally jogs my memory that the variety of occasions I verify my cellphone to see if somebody has reached out is disproportionate to the variety of notifications I obtain per hour. Briefly, there is no such thing as a want for me to be checking it as typically as I’m.
In contrast to a display time notification or restrict, which is enabled as soon as somebody reaches their day by day app restrict, Brick positively reinforces my time spent with out my apps. A widget pops up when you brick your gadget, displaying a timer exhibiting how lengthy you have been offline since bricking.
Additionally: Why Windows sucks and how to fix it, according to a former Microsoft engineer
It straight contrasts the destructive reinforcement that’s the “You’ve got reached your day by day Instagram restrict” notifications I obtain via Display Time. Within the app, you may as well see how a lot time you have spent bricking every day. All these options and touches assist me construct the case for myself that I can really go with out these apps for extended intervals.
What I might prefer to see improved
You need not brick your gadget to provoke a schedule, say at 9 a.m., as soon as you have began work. However you’ll need your Brick available at 5 p.m., while you need to unbrick your gadget. That is irritating for those who’re not in the identical location as your Brick as soon as the clock strikes 5 p.m., however there is a workaround, which a good friend let me in on.
If you wish to unbrick your cellphone after the allotted brick time is over in your schedule, my good friend really helpful creating one other schedule instantly after your first schedule ends, after which unbricking a random app. This allows the scheduling characteristic and unbricks the specified apps with out requiring the bodily gadget.
My good friend additionally talked about how Brick did not register his change in time zones when he was touring, one thing he’d like Brick to enhance.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
I extremely suggest Brick for those who battle with recurrently checking your cellphone or losing time on social media. In the course of the first full week I used it, my display time decreased by 7%. Its optimistic reinforcements, somewhat than admonishments while you’ve gone over your allotted display time, incrementally construct the case which you can, certainly, go with out these apps.
I might suggest this most to individuals searching for a productiveness increase — whether or not that is one you are searching for out on or off the job. After bricking my cellphone one evening, I made a decision to go on a not-so-addictive however still-distracting app earlier than mattress. I watched one YouTube video for round two minutes, till I spotted I may very well be studying my e book as a substitute. I am undecided if I might have made that selection with out Brick.
I do know, $55 is a excessive value to pay for self-control. Nonetheless, from my expertise with the gadget, it’s price it for the standard of life improve and the long-desired autonomy from my gadgets that I’ve regained.
