Bloom - Conquer Screen Time

This is soooooo freaking helpful! I can put my Bloom card in another room, or in my backpack while at work, or in my wallet, it’s actually such a helpful hack I never knew I needed. I also prefer this hugely over Brick square alternative because it’s a card and so slim and I always have it in my wallet. So whether I’m at home or going to coffee shop to work, I always have it on me. I’ve been using Bloom for like a few months and I can honestly say any time I’ve used this, I stay focused. It’s almost like I know I can stay focused, but pure willpower allows me to fall short. But adding just ONE barrier to getting back on the apps allows me to have a second thought and I’m like “Hm I actually don’t need to check notifications for miscellaneous apps and I can honestly check my texts later”. I like that I can pick apps I will allow in focus mode and I like that if for some crazy reason (hasn’t happened to me yet) you don’t have your card on you, you have a few chances to get out of the mode. I love the dark interface of the app and it’s very easy to use. If you suffer from procrastination, I say try this out. It’s one payment for the card and free app usage. It’s worth a try and calm sure worth the one time investment.

Bloom is a great app that offers the best screen time service out there. That being said, I don’t like this new update. The new features of creating an account and connecting socially with others are great, but they are far outweighed by the new problems. For one, the new way that the global Bloom statistics are displayed are much worse than they previously were. Instead of separated categories of screen time, streak, and weekly usage, it is all mashed together in a very confusing and unappealing display. Second, the new update brought a bug that causes my most used websites to not appear when selecting what to block. It used to display fifty plus websites under the different categories, but now only gives me two or three different websites, none of which include the ones I use the most. This is based out of my Safari browser. Nonetheless, I love the Bloom app and eagerly look forward to these problems being fixed.

I’m quite happy with what this app does. Lately I’ve felt I’ve been using distracting apps entirely too much, sinking a lot of time into social media. Which is designed to be extremely addictive to push ads. Luckily I came across Bloom. The form factor is perfect. Keeping my bloom card in my wallet is just enough of an inconvenience that when the social media urge hits and and I see one of the many funny block messages, it’s enough to redirect my energy to something else. I’ve started learning game development again, and reading e-books in my spare time. After reading Atomic Habits, I can see why Bloom is much more effective compared to Apples own screen. I like that you can set up an allow or block list. I’ve set mine up to be pretty restrictive with few breaks using the schedule. And the emergency bypass cooldown is a genius way to add scarcity to greatly reduce the urge to use them. The app is great, fairly easy to use. But Apple needs to get their stuff together and fix the app picker. The selection limits and frequent crashing when setting up really hampers a new user. Best advice is to individually search each app you want to block/allow. Thanks Bloom team for giving me my time back, many thanks!