I had every intention of reading when I got into bed, but my e-reader wouldn't power up. Instead, I launched Instagram because I'm Gen X and that's where we watch TikTok. After 20 minutes, I was nearly done, except the last video wasn't funny enough, so I needed one more.
By the time my gaze shifted two centimeters up to check the itty-bitty clock on my screen, a full 65 minutes had passed. Like everyone else on the planet, I was deeply disappointed in my lack of restraint against ye mighty smartphone and pledged to leave it in another room every night thereafter, which I did precisely zero times.
A few weeks later, a little white puck arrived in the mail. A representative from ScreenZen had sent me Halo, a $49 app-blocking device that creates a geofence (or "halo") around any space you choose. Halo is the device, and ScreenZen is the app used to manage it, as well as the name of the company. The app is free with no upsells and no subscription required, and you can use the app without a Halo, though you'd miss out on the geo-fence feature.
My expectations were low because other app blockers I've tested (Brick, Unpluq Tag, Opal) didn't work in a way that matched my lifestyle, or they were too easy to defeat. The costs are not trivial either, particularly for app blockers that don't do much unless you also pay an annual subscription fee. Honestly, some of the things you can buy to stop you from using a device you spent hundreds of dollars on are truly bizarre.
Halo is different, not only in how it works but also how it framed my mindset.
Courtesy of ScreenZen
Halo works by creating a geo-fence that blocks apps on your phone once you cross into the designated space around the device. You can set it to block apps 24/7 or during certain hours only, and you can choose which apps it blocks or allows. The radius of the geo-fence is adjustable, so it works for large and small bedrooms alike. You can even set it up to work across multiple rooms, as long as your walls aren't solid concrete. I found one YouTuber who put a Halo in his car.
The marketing angle is part of Halo's brilliance. Blocking apps in the bedroom when you should be sleeping (or doing other bedroom activities) gets at a specific problem people have when it comes to exercising temperance with their devices. Brick, which I'd argue is the most well-known app blocker, promises to block your most distracting apps until you physically go to your Brick and tap your phone to it—a fine idea, and one that many people have found valuable, but it doesn't hit the same nerve.
Messages and phone calls can be allowed to come through.
Courtesy of ScreenZenNot getting enough quality sleep ruins lives, and the anxiety associated with sleeplessness is universal and timeless. Long before we had pocket computers to disrupt our slumber, the poet John Keats begged the personification of sleep to “Save me from curious Conscience,” as if being awake with our own dreadful thoughts for too long is its own kind of nightmare.
Today, we have top 10 NASDAQ companies infiltrating our bedrooms, beaming videos of cats falling into bathtubs directly into our eyeballs to distract us from our thoughts and soothe our souls. And it works. And we all kind of hate it, at least a little bit, because it's not the same as the beautiful yet temporary exit from consciousness that we call sleep.
You can set up your own block list and schedule.
Courtesy of ScreenZenIf you were lying in bed desperate for a hit of scrolling, could you defeat Halo? Yes, you could, though the app has an optional setting that makes it harder to do so. Disabling Bluetooth doesn't affect it. The easiest way to access your blocked apps is to get out of bed and leave the room, and if you do that, well, then you're not passively scrolling. You're taking action and making a choice. Plus, if you share your bed with someone, they may notice if you leave the room, which adds a layer of accountability.
The last hook that I love about Halo and ScreenZen is when the app shows you your current streak. If you try to open an app in a forbidden place and time, the app shows you a block screen which tells you how many days you've been loyal to your intentions. Once I made it past 30 days, I couldn't bear the thought of starting over. Like building muscle, building good habits gets easier the more you do them.
Halo isn’t perfect. On occasion, it fails to enable right away. Also, if I leave the bedroom when apps are blocked, turn on a podcast, and return to the bedroom with my phone, sometimes the podcast continues to play, and sometimes it switches off as it should. Both those issues seem to have improved since the last app update, however.
There’s a little smudge of ink on the Halo.
Photograph: Jill DuffyI received a loaner device, but had I paid $49 for a Halo, I would have been annoyed that the ink from a tiny pamphlet in the box bled onto the gleaming white puck. Then again, no one has to see your Halo. Pop it into your nightstand, and it still works just fine. Or you can attach it to any surface by applying a mounting sticker that comes in the box.
You never have to charge Halo because it runs on replaceable “half-AA batteries,” which I had to look up because I've never heard of them. It also took some fiddling and vigor to twist open the puck to reveal its weird little batteries, which I shouldn't have to replace until sometime in 2028.
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