Scream Time
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Scream Time is a screen-time app with one rule: when your daily limit runs out, the only way to unlock more time is to scream — three times, loud enough, in a row. Most people would rather put the phone down.
The mechanic
Simple by design — the mechanic only works because it's this direct.
Pick a daily time budget for your phone as a whole, or for specific distracting apps.
The app (or category) locks automatically using Apple's Screen Time framework — the same enforcement families rely on.
Three loud sounds in a row buys back a short block of time. It's easy to do alone — much harder to want to do around other people, which is exactly why it works.
The theory
The mechanic isn't a gimmick — it's the entire strategy.
A password or a friend holding your PIN is private — easy to override alone. A scream is public. Anyone nearby hears exactly what you're doing and why.
Most blockers rely on self-discipline in the moment you have the least of it. Scream Time replaces that with a cost most people would rather not pay in front of others — at a desk, on a bus, in a waiting room.
Each additional unlock for the same app raises the bar — one more scream than the last, up to a cap. Diminishing returns discourage screaming your way around your own limit.
Data handling
The mic is used for one narrow purpose, entirely on-device.
The app reads live decibel level only. No audio is captured to a file, stored, or transmitted anywhere.
Decibel readings never leave the device. There is no server-side audio processing.
There's no sign-up, no tracking SDK, and no server of any kind. Nothing about how you use the app is collected anywhere.
For the review team
For the locking to mean anything, it has to happen at the system level — not inside our app, where it could be closed or force-quit around. That's the one piece we can't build ourselves, and it's why we're requesting this entitlement.
Scream Time requests the Family Controls entitlement to use Apple's DeviceActivity, ManagedSettings, and FamilyControls frameworks as intended: to let a person set their own daily usage limit and have iOS enforce it at the system level, rather than through a workaround (VPN profiles, accessibility-permission hacks, or app-switch detection).
The entitlement is used for self-directed screen-time management, not parental supervision of a second device or account. All limits are set by the device's own user, for their own device, and enforcement is local — there is no remote management console or third-party account involved.
We're happy to walk through the implementation in more detail or provide a TestFlight build for review on request.
Status
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Reach out with any questions during review.