What Freedom is actually good at
Freedom blocks apps and websites on a schedule, everywhere you are signed in at once. Start a session on the Mac and the phone goes quiet too, which is the one thing almost nothing else on this page does. It runs on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and ChromeOS, has no device limit, ships blocklists you can edit, and adds focus sounds if you want them.
Pricing is a free tier, $8.99 a month, $3.33 a month billed annually, or $99.50 once for lifetime access, which was $199 before the current discount.
If the hole in your day is the phone rather than the Mac, buy Freedom and stop reading. iOS blocking is genuinely hard to build and Freedom is the mature answer to it. What follows is for people whose problem is one machine.
Why people go looking anyway
The subscription outlives the problem. Blockers are bought during a bad month. Nine good months later the charge is still there, and $8.99 a month is more than most of the software on the same Mac cost once.
It needs an account and a session. A blocked list only applies inside a session you started, on a device that has synced. That is the price of working across five platforms, and it is overhead if you only ever wanted one Mac to behave.
The wall is the wrong shape. A hard block for two hours turns a decision into a countdown, and the reflex just waits it out. Plenty of people discover they did not want to be locked out, they wanted to be asked.
Start with the free ones
Screen Time is already on your Mac. App Limits and Downtime cover the blunt version of this for free, and if that turns out to be enough you have saved yourself an app. Two limits are worth knowing before you rely on it: website limits only apply properly in Safari, and Apple exposes no Screen Time API, so no third-party app can read or extend it.
SelfControl is free and open source, Mac only, and famously unforgiving. You set a blocklist and a timer, and until the timer ends nothing undoes it - not quitting, not deleting the app, not restarting. When you genuinely need a wall rather than a nudge, it is still the best free answer.
Cold Turkey Blocker has a free tier that blocks websites, keeps exceptions, runs timed blocks and shows statistics. Pro is a one-time purchase of around $40 and adds app blocking, scheduled blocks, locking modes and Frozen Turkey, which locks the whole computer. It is the strictest thing on this page and the usual recommendation for people who have already beaten every softer blocker.
Between those three, most of the "block a site for two hours" job is covered without a subscription.
Friction instead of a wall
NoMore takes the opposite view: nothing is on a timer and there is no session to start. An entry is blocked while it is on the list, and each one is a named streak with a day count, its own sites and apps, and a strictness of Gentle, Firm or Brutal. A streak can be held to a window of the day
- active hours, off by default - but that is one From and one To, not a timetable.
When you open something on the list, it puts a screen in front of it. Not an error page: your streak, and a lopsided choice.
The small link works. NoMore is friction, not a lock, and it says so: anyone determined to get past it will, in about four seconds. What it changes is the reflex - the tab you open without deciding to - by making the cost visible at the moment of the decision rather than in a weekly report.
Mechanically it watches the frontmost application and asks the browser for the current tab, then compares both against a list held on your Mac. There is no DNS filter, no VPN profile and no proxy, so no URL you visit ever leaves the machine. It reads a tab's address and an app's name, and forgets both.
Two honest costs. It is one Mac: no iPhone app, no sync, and nothing stops you on another device. And a video already playing in a background window keeps playing, because the block acts when you open something, not on the network.
It is $8.99 one-time with a 30-day trial that needs no card and no email, and it is covered feature by feature in how to block websites on a Mac.
Where the alternatives win
Freedom wins on the phone, and that is not a small win. It also wins on scheduling: recurring sessions that start themselves at 9am are its native shape. NoMore's active hours only narrow a block to the same window every day - they never start a session for you.
Cold Turkey Pro wins on strictness. Blocks survive restarts, reinstalls and a determined user, and Frozen Turkey can take the whole machine away from you. NoMore will never do that, because it is built on the assumption that you can always get through and should have to look at the number first.
SelfControl wins on price and honesty about scope: free, open source, one job, no account.
Screen Time wins on being already installed, and on covering an iPhone that a Mac app cannot see.
None of them, including NoMore, fixes the underlying question of where the hours actually go. That is measurement rather than blocking, and it is Tally's job.
Side by side
| Tool | Shape | Devices | Account | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freedom | Scheduled sessions | Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, ChromeOS | Required | $8.99/mo, $3.33/mo yearly, $99.50 once |
| Cold Turkey Pro | Hard blocks, locking | Mac, Windows | No | Around $40 once |
| SelfControl | Timer you cannot undo | Mac | No | Free |
| Screen Time | Limits and Downtime | Apple devices | Apple ID | Free |
| NoMore | Friction at the moment you open it | One Mac | No | $8.99 once |
Pick by what actually fails. If you lose the evening to the phone, it is Freedom. If you have already talked your way past three blockers, it is Cold Turkey. If a Mac tab opens itself while you are working, a wall is more than you need and a number in front of it is usually enough.
If starting is the problem rather than stopping, a timer is the better tool: Pawodoro and the rest are cut by which moment they act on in the best focus apps for Mac.
Prices and features checked on 27 August 2026.
