Halo geofence – A $49 device called Halo from ScreenZen blocks selected apps once a phone crosses a geofence around your chosen space, aiming to stop bedtime scrolling—without recurring fees or upsells.
I had every intention of reading when I got into bed. My e-reader wouldn’t power up, so my hand did what it always does—Instagram, because that’s where Gen X watches TikTok.
After about 20 minutes, I was nearly done. Then the last video wasn’t funny enough, and I needed one more. The moment I shifted my gaze two centimeters up to check the tiny clock on my screen, the damage was already done: 65 minutes had passed.
I wasn’t just tired. I was frustrated in a very specific way—at the feeling that I’d been out-negotiated by a device I had promised myself I could resist. Like everyone else, I pledged to leave my phone in another room every night. I followed through with that plan precisely zero times.
Weeks later, a small white puck arrived in the mail. A representative from ScreenZen sent me Halo, a $49 app-blocking device designed to create a geofence—or “halo”—around any space you choose. Halo is the device itself, and ScreenZen is the company behind it, along with the management app.
The app is free, with no upsells and no subscription required. You can even use the app without owning a Halo, but you’d lose the geofence feature that makes the whole idea work.
My expectations were low. Other app blockers I’d tested—Brick. Unpluq Tag. and Opal—had either failed to match the way I actually live or proved too easy to defeat. And the price tag for some competitors isn’t small either. especially for blockers that only become meaningfully useful after you agree to pay an annual subscription. There’s a particular kind of irony in buying gadgets meant to stop you from using a device you already paid hundreds of dollars for.
Halo tries a different route, and it shows up immediately in how it reframes the problem. Instead of begging you to change behavior through taps, pings, or reminders, it creates a boundary in your physical space.
Halo works by creating a geofence that blocks apps on your phone once you cross into the designated area around the device. You can set it to block apps 24/7 or only during certain hours. You also get to choose which apps are blocked—or allowed. The radius of the geofence is adjustable, so it can fit both large and small bedrooms.
It can even be set to work across multiple rooms, as long as your walls aren’t solid concrete. A YouTuber has gone as far as placing a Halo in a car.
What struck me most, though, wasn’t just the mechanics. It was the pitch behind them. Blocking apps in the bedroom—when you’re supposed to be sleeping or doing other bedroom activities—targets the most familiar failure point: getting through the day with good intentions. then losing the fight the second you’re comfortable enough to scroll.
Brick has its own logic. It promises to block your most distracting apps until you physically go to your Brick and tap your phone to it. Plenty of people have found that approach valuable. But it didn’t hit the same nerve for me as the idea of turning your room itself into the rule.
Halo’s geofence approach is built for the moment you give up willpower—not when you’re thinking about it.
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