How to block porn on iPhone

Before you start

Set aside twenty minutes during the day, not late at night, and do it together with the person who will hold the passcode. The settings themselves are easy. The hard part is usually asking someone.

A note on the menus: Apple rebuilt Screen Time in iOS 27, and Apple’s own guides don’t use the same names everywhere yet. The paths below come from Apple’s iPhone User Guide for iOS 26 and iOS 27, read on October 11, 2026. If an item looks different on your phone, use the search field at the top of Settings.

Step 1: Turn on Screen Time (2 minutes)

• iOS 27: Settings > Screen Time > Manage Screen Time > Turn On App & Website Activity.
• iOS 26: Settings > Screen Time > App & Website Activity, then turn it on.

Turn this on first, so all the features are available.

Step 2: Filter adult websites (3 minutes)

1. Open Settings > Screen Time.
2. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and turn on Content & Privacy Restrictions.
3. Tap App Store, Media, Web & Games, then Web Content.
4. Choose Limit Adult Websites.
5. Under Never Allow, tap Add Website to block specific sites the filter lets through.

That is the path in Apple’s iOS 26 guide. The iOS 27 guide no longer walks through Web Content for your own iPhone step by step, but it still lists App Store, Media, Web & Games under Content & Privacy Restrictions. In the new iOS 27 family settings, the same option is also called Limit Adult Websites and sits under Websites > Filtering.

Be honest with yourself in step 5. Add the sites that were usually your way in, even if they aren’t porn sites on paper.

Step 3: Someone else sets the passcode (5 minutes)

Without a passcode, you can undo every restriction in ten seconds. With a passcode you know, you can too. So for this step, hand your phone over.

• iOS 27: Settings > Screen Time > Manage Screen Time > Lock Screen Time Settings.
• iOS 26: Settings > Screen Time, scroll down, Lock Screen Time Settings.

The other person enters a four-digit passcode twice while you look away. Your iPhone then offers Screen Time Passcode Recovery through an Apple Account. Apple says plainly that this can be a different Apple Account from the one signed in on the device. Have the person enter their own Apple Account. If yours is on file, you can reset the passcode with your own password any time, and the lock becomes decoration.

Who should it be? Someone reliable who won’t cave when you text at midnight that you need the code “just for a second.” A friend, a brother, an older coworker. Whether your wife should hold it is something to talk through openly. Some couples want that. Others want to keep her from becoming the security guard. More on choosing someone: accountability partner.

Something you can say: “Can I ask you a small favor? I’d like you to type a passcode into my phone that I don’t know, so I can’t turn my filter off alone at night. You won’t get any reports and you don’t have to check up on me.”

Step 4: Close the obvious gaps (10 minutes)

From here on, the restrictions in this section are protected by the passcode.

• No new apps without the code. Under Content & Privacy Restrictions > iTunes & App Store Purchases, restrict installing apps. That way no second browser and no workaround app lands on your phone unnoticed. Install new apps together.
• One browser is enough. Delete other browsers if you have them. Apple names “Safari and other supported browser apps” explicitly for Ask to Browse in the family settings; for the filter on your own iPhone, Apple gives no list of browsers.
• Lock the risky hour. If it usually happens late, in bed, lock the apps that matter during that window. In iOS 27 use Screen Time Schedule and Time Allowances. In iOS 26 use Downtime and App Limits. One detail from Apple: in iOS 26, limits can be ignored by default. Only with a Screen Time passcode and Block at Downtime turned on do the apps actually stay closed.
• Warnings for sensitive images. Settings > Privacy & Security > Sensitive Content Warning. According to Apple, your iPhone then warns you before you receive or send sensitive images. This setting lives outside Screen Time, and Apple does not say the passcode protects it.
• Lock changes. Under Content & Privacy Restrictions, set the items under Allow Changes To to Don’t Allow where you don’t need them.

One practical tip that isn’t a setting at all: charge your phone overnight outside the bedroom. It’s just an outlet in the hallway, but it takes the tool out of your hand during the riskiest hour.

Where Screen Time falls short

It would be dishonest to promise you a wall. Know these four limits.

Lists are never complete. Every web filter works from lists and patterns. It misses some sites and sometimes blocks harmless ones. That’s why Never Allow and Always Allow exist.

Apps aren’t websites. The web filter covers pages in the browser. What an app such as a social network shows inside itself is up to the app. If one particular app is your way in, the answer is a time limit or deleting it.

The passcode is the weak point. Anyone who knows the code, or can reset it with their own Apple Account, is out in a minute. That’s why step 3 matters most.

Other devices. An old tablet, the laptop, the TV: one unprotected device gets around everything. For Mac, Windows PC, Linux and your home router, consurgam.com/protect has a setup with one click or one command. There too, the person you trust keeps the administrator password.

And the most important limit: a block doesn’t change why you reach for the phone. It buys you a moment. What to do with that moment is on the page when the urge hits.

What Consurgam adds

Consurgam is built on protection without surveillance. The retreat lock uses Apple’s Screen Time: before the apps and sites you choose, a pause appears with your own sentence and a button, Turn back, that leads you out. Opening anyway is possible after a short wait. It is a decision, not a wall. There is also a Safari extension with a block list of tens of thousands of sites, which Safari checks itself on the device. The extension reads no pages, keeps no history and sends nothing, and nobody receives a report. One limit applies here too: according to Apple, Safari extensions with access to browsing data are turned off automatically in Private Browsing until you allow them there. So check in Safari’s settings that the protection is on for private browsing as well. The retreat lock stays free, always.

If you would rather have another person see what happens on your phone, software that sends reports is the better fit. There is a fair comparison under Covenant Eyes alternatives.