Block your own apps. A friend holds the key. Silence = denial.
kydos lets you put real friction between you and the apps you keep opening. You pick a keyholder you trust. If they don't answer your override by your next daily reset, the shield stays up.
How it works
Three steps. No tricks. No way around your friend.
kydos is intentionally simple. The whole point is that you can't talk yourself out of it — you can only talk your keyholder into it.
Step 01
Pick the apps to block
On your own iPhone, choose the apps and categories that pull you in. The picker lives entirely on your device — kydos never sees the app names.
Step 02
Choose a keyholder friend
Invite someone you trust over SMS. They install kydos and accept the link. From then on, they hold the only door out.
Step 03
Overrides need their approval
When you want past the shield, your keyholder gets the request. If they don't respond before your next daily reset, the request expires and you stay locked.
The Keyholder
One friend. Or a small council. Either way, they hold the key — not you.
A keyholder is the person who decides whether a moment of weakness actually gets through. You can pick one friend, or a small group where any of them can approve. One denial closes the door for that request. Silence does the same thing.
kydos is fail-closed by design. If your keyholder is asleep, in a meeting, or just over it for the day, your override quietly expires at the next reset. The product is the part where nothing happens.
Any one approves
One yes opens, one no closes
Each commitment has its own keyholders. Any one of them can approve an override — and a single deny closes that request for everyone.
Fail-closed
No response = no override
Requests don't carry over. If no one approves before your next daily reset, the request expires and the shield stays up.
Features
The boring guarantees that make it actually work.
We picked four constraints early and built around them. They're the reason kydos can't be bargained with at 11pm.
Fail-closed
Built to deny by default
When your keyholder goes quiet, the shield stays up. There is no fallback that lets the apps through.
Time-boxed grants
Overrides expire on their own
When a keyholder approves, the unlock runs for a fixed window — never longer than your next daily reset. No early revocation, no surprise yanks.
Per-app limits
A shield with a shape
Apply different rules to different bundles: hard block on one set of apps, daily-minutes cap on another. All chosen on your phone, never on the web.
Append-only audit
An honest paper trail
Every request, approval, denial, and grant lands in a log that can only be added to — never edited, never deleted. You and your keyholder see the same history.
From the testers
“The first time my keyholder didn't reply, I sat with the shield up for forty minutes and got bored. That has never happened to me before.”
Early tester
Closed beta, 2 weeks in
FAQ
Honest answers, before you sign up.
kydos is opinionated. Some of these answers are “no” on purpose — that's how it earns the silence-equals-denial promise.
Stop negotiating with yourself at midnight.
kydos is in private beta. Join the waitlist and we'll get you and your keyholder onboarded together.
Join the waitlistiOS 16.1+ · no payments, no third-party trackers