Opal vs Brick

Opal charges you every year to make a block hard to lift. Brick charges you once and makes the block a thing you have to walk to.

By Ruslan Shchuchkin, who built PhoneStop · Last checked September 2026 · Read this page as Markdown

The short version

Choose Opal if you want flexibility and will pay yearly for it. Schedules, categories, Deep Focus, and detailed control, all in software, near $100 a year.

Choose Brick if you have out-tapped software already. If you have installed and defeated app-based blockers, the fix is not another clever app; it is distance. A $59 puck left in another room turns an impulsive unlock into a walk.

Software if you want control; hardware if you want a wall you cannot argue with from the sofa.

How each one stops you

Opal is pure software on Apple's Screen Time API: build a session, block apps and categories, and let Deep Focus raise the cost of quitting. Everything lives in the app, and everything in the app can, in principle, be changed in the app.

Brick moves the off-switch out of the phone. Your apps stay gone until you physically tap the phone on the puck, so the unlock is a physical act in physical space. That is a different kind of hard: not a harder tap, but a walk to another room.

Where Opal wins

• Flexible: schedules, categories, routines.
• No object to carry or lose.
• Deep Focus for a strong software block.
• Richer control for people who like to tune things.

Where Brick wins

• $59 once, no subscription.
• Physical distance is the strongest deterrent there is.
• Nothing to configure, tap on, tap off.
• It beats software for people who defeat software.

You are paying to make one app harder to reach

Opal and Brick answer the same question, how do I make the app harder to open, with a subscription and a puck. But both still work app by app: you nominate what to block, and the phone stays fully open for everything you did not nominate. The hours are slippery precisely because they move to whatever is not on the list.

PhoneStop stops counting apps and starts counting time. One budget for the whole phone, draining as you use it, with a stop when it is gone. No yearly fee, no object, no blocklist to keep guessing at. Free on Android, iPhone coming, and it cannot block a single app on purpose.

Disclosure: we make PhoneStop, so treat our own entry with the scepticism it deserves. Everything else here is written from public information and hands-on use; prices and platforms were checked in September 2026 and change often, so check the vendor before you pay.