Focus September 2026

5 apps for what Screen Time won't fix

Screen Time reports the damage a day late, and the passcode is four taps away from anyone who set it. These five work earlier in the chain: friction before the app opens, a session with something at stake, a home screen with nothing to fall into, a record of where the hours went, and somewhere to put the reading you were doing on the phone anyway.

The apps for what Screen Time won't fix are one sec, Focus Train, Blank Spaces, ATracker and Instapaper. I built Focus Train; the other 4 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published September 2026 · apps and prices last checked 13 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   one sec

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Productivity · App Store 4.8 (23,692)

   one sec puts a few seconds of friction in front of a distracting app: breathe, then say whether you still want it. It delays instead of blocking.

   Skip it if you are staying on the free tier: reviewers describe it as deliberately more irritating than the paid one, which is an odd thing to build into an app about calm.

   Official site ↗More lists with one sec

   
2. 

   Focus Train Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Productivity · App Store 5.0 (5)

   In Focus Train a focus session becomes a train ride. Pick 25, 50 or 90 minutes; the train covers real distance. Look away and it just waits at the platform.

   App Store ↗More lists with Focus Train

   
3. 

   Blank Spaces

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Productivity · App Store 4.6 (8,415)

   Blank Spaces is a minimal widget that takes over the home screen: a short list of the apps you meant to open, and no grid of icons to fall into.

   Skip it if you want to try it first: there is no real trial, and setting it up asks more of you than a launcher promising simplicity should.

   Official site ↗More lists with Blank Spaces

   
4. 

   ATracker

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Productivity · App Store 4.7 (3,186)

   ATracker starts and stops a log for anything in one tap, phone or not. Pie and bar charts then show where the hours actually went.

   Skip it if you want sync without a subscription: iCloud sync sits behind it, and more than one reviewer lost years of history reinstalling.

   Official site ↗More lists with ATracker

   
5. 

   Instapaper

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · News · App Store 4.6 (3,542)

   Instapaper saves the articles you keep meaning to read, stripped of clutter and readable offline. A saved list runs out. A feed does not.

   Skip it if you remember it as free — text-to-speech and the higher limits moved behind a subscription with little warning, and support is one email address.

   Official site ↗More lists with Instapaper

   

Focus Train is one of mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.