A routine starts a Fella blocking session automatically, on the days and times you choose. You do not open the app, decide again, or rely on remembering at the exact moment it matters least.
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Most app blockers put the decision in the worst possible place: the moment you want the app. A scheduled block moves that decision hours earlier, to a calm moment when you are setting things up rather than reaching for your phone. That is the whole argument for scheduling, and it is why the setup step matters more than the blocking step.
Blocking in Fella runs in sessions, and a routine is simply a session that starts itself. You pick the apps, pick the days, pick the start and end time, and the session begins on its own. Nothing needs to be opened or confirmed on the day.
Sessions run from 15 minutes upward. Fifteen minutes is Apple's minimum for Screen Time sessions and Fella does not try to get around it. Above that there is room for whatever shape your week actually has, a two-hour deep work block each weekday morning, an evening wind-down, or a single routine that covers Friday night to Monday morning.
Routines are separate from each other. A weekday routine and a weekend routine can block different sets of apps, so the apps you need for work are not tied to the apps you want gone on a Saturday.
Apple already offers scheduled restriction through Downtime, and for plenty of people it is enough. If you have not tried it, start there: our guides cover setting up Downtime and blocking apps at certain times of day in full, and both are free.
The gap shows up at the moment the schedule fires. Downtime presents a screen carrying an Ignore Limit button, and dismissing it takes one tap and no thought. The schedule was real; the boundary at the end of it was not. If that is the part that keeps failing for you, our page on ignoring Screen Time limits covers why.
A Fella routine starts an actual blocking session instead. Same underlying Apple framework, different ending: one 5-minute emergency unlock for the session rather than a button that clears the whole thing. The schedule decides when; the session decides how firmly.
Weekday mornings. A block that starts before you wake and ends mid-morning, so the first hour of the day is not spent in a feed. Related: block social media in the morning and stop checking your phone in the morning.
Working hours. Social and news apps blocked across the working day, with the apps you genuinely need left untouched. Related: block apps during work.
Evenings and nights. A routine that closes the feed apps a couple of hours before bed and holds until morning. Related: block apps while sleeping and stop scrolling at night.
Whole weekends. One long session from Friday evening to Monday morning, which is the case where a dismissible limit tends to break down fastest. For splitting weekdays from weekends entirely, see building a weekly blocking schedule.
Exam season. A routine that runs every day of exam week without needing to be turned on each morning. Related: blocking apps during exams.
Scheduling assumes the problem has a shape. If your pull toward an app is tied to particular hours, a routine fits it exactly. If it is not, a schedule just creates windows where the app is allowed, and those windows fill up.
For an app you want gone regardless of the hour, block it by default rather than on a timetable. That is a different setup, and we cover it on all-day app blocking. Fella supports both, and there is no rule against running a default block on your worst apps and a routine on the merely distracting ones.
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Yes. A Fella routine starts a blocking session automatically on the days and times you choose, so the selected apps lock themselves without you opening the app first.
A session is a period where your selected apps are blocked. A routine is the schedule that starts one for you. You can also start a session manually at any time. Either way, each session gets exactly one 5-minute emergency unlock.
Downtime shows a limit screen you can dismiss with Ignore Limit. A Fella routine starts a real blocking session instead, with a single 5-minute emergency unlock rather than an open-ended bypass.
15 minutes. That is Apple's minimum for Screen Time sessions, and Fella does not try to get around it. There is no practical upper limit, so a routine can run a full working day or a whole weekend.
Yes. Routines are separate, so a weekday morning block and a full weekend block can exist side by side with different apps selected for each.
Each session includes one 5-minute emergency unlock. When the five minutes are up, the selected apps lock again automatically for the rest of that session.
No. Fella uses Apple's DeviceActivity framework to start scheduled sessions, so a routine runs whether or not you open the app that day.
