You already know what to do. That’s the annoying part.
Knowing was never the problem. The problem is the ninety seconds after an urge shows up, when your hands are already moving and there is nothing else to do.
The blocker you deleted
You installed it on a good day and pulled it on a bad one. That is what happens when the off switch sits one tap away.
The counter that hit zero
Day six felt good. Then one bad night and the screen said 0, which is a lie. You had six days. They happened.
Videos at 2am
You’ve watched the science videos, the routines, the podcast clips, usually at 2am instead of sleeping. You already know plenty, which is how you know more information was never the missing piece.
Monke Reset gives you something to do. Right when it hits.
Why porn blockers stop working
Blockers fail two ways. The off switch sits as close as the thing it blocks, so it goes on the bad night. And the counter beside it resets to zero, which turns a single slip into a reason to stop trying at all. Distance, and keeping the days you already did, are what change it.
Do streak counters actually help?
Counting helps. Recording progress is one of the best-evidenced things anyone has found for changing a habit, which is why the streak is in the app. What fails is a counter that resets to zero and then shows you the zero, because it renders one bad night as proof you were never going to manage it. Psychologists call that the abstinence violation effect: what predicts a full relapse is not the lapse, it is the story told about it.
Can a porn blocker be uninstalled?
Most of them, yes, and that is the whole failure. A blocker that lives as an app gets deleted like an app. Monke Reset hands the blocking to Apple's Screen Time content filter instead, so the filter sits in iPhone Settings behind a passcode rather than behind an icon you can press and hold.
Is there a porn blocker that can't be bypassed?
No, and anyone selling you one is lying. On an iPhone, whoever knows the Screen Time passcode can switch any filter off, ours included. What a good setup buys you is a wall, a passcode and a minute of thinking between you and the thing. That minute is usually the whole fight.
So what has to be different?
Three things. There has to be something to actually do in the ninety seconds after an urge lands. The block has to sit somewhere you cannot reach in one tap. And a bad night has to cost one day rather than everything you already did, because a method that only works for people who never slip is not a method.
That is the shape of Monke Reset, a quit porn app for iPhone: the Help screen covers the ninety seconds, the filter holds across the phone, and a relapse marks one day on a calendar that keeps the rest. If you only want the setup, here is how to block porn on an iPhone, step by step. If you want to know what it stores, read what stays on your phone.
Read one. Put the phone down.
Articles, talks and guided sessions, inside the app. All of them finish in one sitting.
Article
Understanding urges
Why an urge feels like an emergency when it is only loud, and why every one of them ends whether you act on it or not.
Read
Why your head does this
Real science in plain words, no lecture, over in the time it takes an urge to pass.
Listen
People further along than you
Shelved by what you came for, so you are not scrolling a feed looking for the one that helps.
Meditate
A voice at 1am
For the nights you are wired and lying there arguing with yourself. Something to follow instead of the argument.
Day oneis tonight.
Write your reasons down now, while it’s quiet. Help keeps them for when it isn’t.
- Blocks adult sites and apps
- Counts the urges you beat
- Stays on your phone