Questions, problems, feature requests: yo.kononov@gmail.com. Say which iPhone and watch you have and what you saw on screen. Replies usually within a day or two.
Bracer needs an Apple Watch paired to this iPhone: the watch is the only key, so without one nothing can be locked. Pair a watch in the Watch app, then come back. If the watch is paired but Bracer says its watch app is missing, open the Watch app on your iPhone, find Bracer under Available Apps and install it.
The key works when your phone is near. The watch talks to the phone directly, and out of range it sends nothing and queues nothing, so an unlock never fires an hour later when you did not ask for it. Bring the phone closer and the Unlock button comes back.
The minutes count time inside the opened apps, not time on the clock. Ten minutes of scrolling is ten minutes of scrolling, however long the phone sat in your pocket in between. There is also an outer bound of about fifteen minutes, after which the shield returns even if you never scrolled.
iOS puts the shield back on its own schedule, usually within half a minute of the end of the window, sometimes a little more on a phone in Low Power Mode. That is normal.
You cannot, and that is the point of it. A lock you can cancel is a limit you can ignore. It ends on its own at the time you chose: an hour, three hours, or 7:00 in the morning. A second Lock for… only ever makes it longer.
That is Key strictness working. Under Gets stricter, each key of the day waits longer than the last: none, five minutes, half an hour, then until 7:00. Under Three a day, the fourth key waits until 7:00. The phone shows when the next key turns. The day starts over at 7:00 in the morning, not at midnight.
A reach is a tap on Fine on the shield: you opened a locked app, met the shield and closed it. Swiping home without tapping Fine is not counted, because iOS does not tell Bracer about it. The number on the shield counts the reaches before this one, and your tap adds one.
Open Bracer. Without a paired watch it returns to the watch step, and there, while your apps are locked, it offers Unlock everything and start over. That clears the lock. Deleting Bracer clears it too.
Bracer asks iPhone for Screen Time access once, during setup. If it was declined, or switched off later, Bracer shows the step again with a button to Settings. Turn it on under Screen Time and come back.
Any app, or a whole category, from Apple’s own picker. Bracer never learns the names of the apps you choose; iOS draws their icons and keeps the rest to itself. The free plan rests one app; Bracer Pro rests as many apps and categories as you like.
Free rests one app, with the key working as often as you like. Bracer Pro rests as many apps and categories as you want and adds Lock for…, Key strictness and Your week. Pro is a monthly or yearly subscription with a free trial, or a one-time purchase that is yours to keep. Prices are shown in the app.
Restore purchase, on the Pro screen, asks the App Store for a plan bought earlier on the same Apple Account. Manage or cancel a subscription in Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions. When a plan ends, everything stays locked until you keep one app free or continue with Pro.
Bracer collects no data at all. There is no account, no server and no analytics. See the privacy policy.