I paid $59 for Brick! Here Are the Best Alternatives!!

You don’t need to spend $59 on a gadget to stop doomscrolling. One of these is completely impressive and has a physical card, too.

Brick is genuinely clever. You get a small magnetic puck, tap your iPhone to it, and all your selected apps lock instantly: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, gone. To unblock them, you have to walk back to the puck and tap again physically.

That 30-second walk is the whole product. And it works. But it costs $59. And there are free alternatives that deliver the same result.

Why Apple’s Screen Time Keeps Failing You

Screen Time is a soft limiter. When your limit runs out, two buttons appear: “One More Minute” and “Ignore Limit for Today.” One tap and you’re back scrolling. The average person spends 2 hours 31 minutes on social media daily, and it keeps climbing largely because the tools people use to fight it don’t create enough resistance to interrupt the automatic reaching behavior. Real blockers make bypassing feel like a deliberate choice, not a reflex.

The Best Free Alternatives in 2026

Detach: Best Overall (Software + Physical Card) App: Free · NFC Card: $9.99 · No account · iOS 17+

Detach is the only alternative that gives you both worlds: a software blocker and a physical NFC card, just like Brick. Except the card costs $9.99 instead of $59.

Here’s how it works: you tap your iPhone to the Detach card, and your selected apps lock instantly, the same mechanic as Brick’s puck, same physical friction, same deliberate ritual of having to walk back to the card to unblock. That 30-second walk that makes Brick so effective? You get the same thing for $49 less.

On the software side, the app itself is completely free. It blocks apps at the system level, the same way parental controls work, so there’s no bypass button waiting to betray you. No account, no subscription.

So your total cost with Detach is $9.99 for the card and $0 for the app. Compared to Brick’s $59 hardware plus ongoing costs. It’s not even close.

One Sec: Best for Breaking the Reflex Free tier · iOS & Android Instead of blocking apps, One Sec inserts a mandatory one-second breathing pause every time you open a distracting app. That single pause is enough to interrupt the mindless tap. Simple, subtle, and surprisingly effective.

The Honest Take

Brick works. But you’re paying $59 for a product that does the same thing as a $9.99 card. Detach has a physical NFC card with the same tap-to-block mechanic, plus free scheduled software blocking on top of it. For $9.99 total or nothing if you use the app, it’s the most complete option on this list by a wide margin.

Tap the card, block your three most distracting apps, and run it for two weeks. You just solved a $59 problem for $9.99.

The apps aren’t magic. The friction is.

Follow me on Medium for more honest takes on digital habits and focus tools.

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