How to lock apps until you’ve prayed, on iPhone
The idea is simple. At prayer time, the apps that swallow your afternoon should not open until you have prayed. An iPhone gets you part of the way there on its own, and it is worth knowing exactly which part.
What iPhone can do on its own
- Downtime (Settings → Screen Time → Downtime) blocks every app except the ones you mark as Always Allowed, on a schedule. It takes one window a day, which you can vary by day of the week. It is the right tool for the night, and we have written about using it that way.
- App Limits (Settings → Screen Time → App Limits) give an app or a category a daily budget, such as an hour of social media. They care how long, not when.
- Focus (Settings → Focus) silences notifications and can hide Home Screen pages, on a schedule. It does not stop an app from opening.
Whichever you use, set a Screen Time passcode, or getting past a limit takes a tap or two.
Why none of them fits the prayers
There are five prayers a day, each with its own window, and the times move every day: a minute or two from one day to the next, and by hours across the year in most places. A Downtime set for today’s ʿAṣr is wrong within a week or two, and Downtime only has one window a day anyway.
The closest you can get with the built-in tools is a Focus called “Salah”, scheduled around each prayer to silence notifications, and edited by hand every couple of weeks. That is a nudge, not a lock, and it lasts only as long as you keep editing it.
A lock that follows the prayer times
This is the gap we built the prayer check-in in DeenDrops for.
You choose the apps with Apple’s own Screen Time picker. DeenDrops is told how many you chose, never which ones.
It works out the prayer timetable on your phone, from your location and the calculation your community follows. Your location is never sent to DeenDrops.
During each prayer’s window, opening one of those apps first asks, “Have you prayed ʿAṣr?” “Yes, I’ve prayed” lets you in. “Not yet” keeps it locked.
Nothing checks your answer. The lock runs on your honesty, and DeenDrops never sees what you tapped. That is by design: the question is there to interrupt a reflex, not to police you.
For hours when you want no way past at all, there is also a complete lock: the apps stay locked for a window you set, nine to twelve for example, and nothing on that screen opens them. DeenDrops is a subscription app with a three-day free trial, and both locks are part of it.
A question, not a cage
There is a hadith that puts the means and the reliance in the same sentence:
“Tie your camel and then put your trust in Allah.”
A lock is only the rope. It clears the way, and the prayer is still yours to stand up for. It is worth clearing the way for:
“The first thing for which a servant will be brought to account on the Day of Resurrection is his prayer. If it is sound, he has succeeded; if it is deficient, he has failed and lost.”