Honest answer
A blocker you
can't turn off?
Not exactly. That's the short, honest answer. On a phone you own, no app can make itself truly impossible to disable — so the real question is what actually works instead. It's simpler than a lock.
Free malware and ad/tracker blocking, always. Other categories and partner alerts: 7-day free trial, then $7/month.
Let's be straight
The honest truth.
On a consumer iPhone or Android that you own, no app can make itself literally impossible to turn off or uninstall. The operating system simply doesn't grant ordinary apps that kind of power. The switches that could lock a phone down that hard are reserved for enterprise device management, the sort a company or school puts on hardware it controls, and no setting on a phone of your own can flip them.
So any app that markets itself as 100% “unremovable” or “impossible to bypass” is overpromising. There is always a path. Settings, a reset, safe mode, a reinstall. What actually matters is that people get furious the moment they discover the bypass they were promised didn't exist. A false lock doesn't build trust; it destroys it. We'd rather tell you the truth up front.
On a shared device, in a workplace, or on a minor's phone, a tool might genuinely need a “you can never remove this” guarantee, which is a job for real device management (MDM) rather than a consumer app, and it belongs to whoever owns and administers the device.
The thing that actually sticks
Accountability, not a lock.
If the technical wall can always be climbed, what's left? Something quieter, and for most people far more effective, is a barrier that's social instead of technical. Not a blocker you can't turn off — a blocker you don't have to face alone.
That's how Sworn is built. Turn the filter off, and your accountability partner gets an email. Uninstall it, disable it, or go dark for a while, and they get a “filter's gone quiet” email. The point isn't that you can't stop — you always can. The point is that you won't be doing it alone, and knowing someone is there is usually enough to make you pause in the moment that matters.
Being honest about the edges: silence alerts catch the common cases, whether that's the filter switched off, the app removed or the phone offline, but no filter is a willpower transplant, and a determined person set on a workaround can find one. What accountability changes is the solitude of the hard moment, and for most people that solitude was the whole problem.
How it goes together
Set it up in about three minutes.
- Install Sworn and pick what to block. Pornography, gambling, social media, online shopping, gaming, or VPN/proxy. Malware blocking is free forever; the paid categories and partner alerts come with a 7-day free trial, then $7/month.
- Turn on the one setting. On iPhone, Sworn asks iOS to add its DNS setting (one Allow tap), then walks you to the one Settings screen where you pick it. On Android, Sworn gives you an address to paste into Android's Private DNS setting and opens that screen for you. No VPN, no management profile, no browser extension. Blocked sites just stop loading across every app.
- Add a partner — that's the part that makes it stick. They get an invite to confirm, and at most one reminder. After that they see a count of blocked attempts and the category, never a URL and never your history, plus a note if you remove a blocked category and an email if the filter goes off or goes quiet. This is the step that turns a filter into accountability, so don't skip it.
No VPN, so banking, Maps and other apps keep working. No screenshots, and no log of the sites you visit. Blocked attempts are kept only as short-lived tallies that power your own in-app view and expire after 7 days, and your partner only ever sees a count of blocked attempts and the category, never a URL. Cancel in two taps.
You can stop.
You won't do it alone.
Free to start. About three minutes to set up.
On a computer too? Set up the phone first, then add Windows, Mac, Linux or Chromebook to the same account.
This is general guidance, not a substitute for professional help.