Read
A small library, hand-picked.
Forty books, built in. From the public domain — Marcus Aurelius, Thoreau, Austen, Tolstoy, Dickinson, the Tao Te Ching, and thirty-four more. Pages turn slowly on purpose. You can also drop in your own PDFs.
An app blocker that gives you something to do.
Brio blocks the apps you're trying to escape — and pulls you straight into a book, a journal, a walk, or a calmer feed.
In review with Apple — open at launch
Most app blockers fight your willpower with a timer and hope you outlast it.
You don't. You never do.
So Brio doesn't ask you to white-knuckle it.
Open a blocked app, and the door doesn't just close — another door opens.
A book. A blank journal page. A street to walk. A feed that won't fry you.
You were going to scroll. Now you're reading.
That's the whole idea.
The four alternatives
A door, every time you close one.
Write
A blank page, on demand.
A typewriter keyboard with no paste key — because nothing you paste is yours. Write a sentence. Or fifty. Stuck? Brio hands you a prompt. Everything you write stays on this device, in your handwriting, where it belongs.
Move
Five hundred steps before the meter fills.
Stand up. The phone watches your steps, draws a trail, marks the quarter, half, and three-quarter mark like landmarks on a map. The app finishes when you do. No GPS, no map of you, just movement.
Scroll
A feed that won't take your afternoon.
Curated reels — breathing exercises, a quote you'll actually keep, a still of a forest, a thirty-second tap-along. Thirty seconds minimum on each one, because the point is to land, not skim. Same gesture, different food.
How a session works
Three moves. That's all there is.
Step 01
Shield up.
Pick the apps you're trying to step away from. Pick how long. Pick which alternatives count. The phone stops being a phone for a while.
Step 02
Land somewhere good.
Brio drops you straight into a book, a page, a path, or a quieter feed. Whichever you toggled. As you go, a small meter fills.
Step 03
Earn your way back.
When the meter is full, you've earned a small unlock — three to fifteen minutes of the apps you blocked. Or skip it. A lot of people do, by the third or fourth session.
A word from Brio
The owl who lives in the app.
Brio · 🦉
"I live in the app. I'll be sharp with you when you slip and quiet when you're focused. I'm not a coach and I'm not a chatbot. I'm just trying to keep us honest."
The Focus Score
One score. Per day. Out of 100.
Most apps gamify forever — streaks of streaks, points for points. Brio keeps it boring on purpose: a single number, every day, made of four things — how long the shield was up, how often you needed an emergency exit, how often you reached for blocked apps without thinking, and whether you moved.
The score is a mirror, not a leaderboard. You're not competing with anyone. You're seeing yesterday clearly so today is better.
85–100 verdigris
65–84 brass
40–64 ember
0–39 crimson
The library
Forty books on the shelf. Every one already inside.
The full library Brio ships with — Stoicism, fiction, poetry, eastern wisdom, the practical and the strange. Free in the public domain. Free in the app.
Meditations
Self-Reliance
Enchiridion
On the Shortness of Life
Apology
As a Man Thinketh
Think and Grow Rich
Science of Getting Rich
The Way of Peace
Power of Concentration
Walden
The Prophet
Nature
Tao Te Ching
The Art of War
The Dhammapada
The Bhagavad Gita
The Analects
The Great Gatsby
The Call of the Wild
Jekyll and Hyde
The Metamorphosis
Leaves of Grass
Rubáiyát
Selected Poems
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Autobiography
Richest Man in Babylon
Art of Money Getting
Acres of Diamonds
Elements of Style
Public Speaking
Art of Logical Thinking
Memory
Majesty of Calmness
Up from Slavery
My Life and Work
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant
The Game of Life
The Story of My Life
Stoicism & Philosophy · 5
Self-Mastery · 5
Nature & Presence · 3
Eastern Wisdom · 5
Classic Fiction · 4
Poetry · 3
Practical & Educational · 15
Trust & privacy
Your screen time stays on your phone.
No account. No login. No cloud sync. Your blocking choices, your journal entries, your reading progress, your score history — all of it lives on this one device. If you delete the app, it goes with you.
Brio uses Apple's Screen Time framework the way Apple intended — on-device, opaque, and private. We don't see your apps. We don't see your usage. Nothing leaves the phone.
- 🔒No account required
- 🦉No data sent to a server
- 🍎Built on Apple's Screen Time framework
A few people have been living with Brio for a while.
I deleted Instagram four times last year and reinstalled it four times. Brio is the first thing that didn't ask me to be a different person. It just gave me somewhere else to put my hand. Maya, 28, designer · Brooklyn
The thing nobody tells you is that the timers don't work because you don't want to wait — you want to do something. Brio figured that out. Daniel, 34, PhD student · Berlin
I read more in the first three weeks of Brio than I did all of last year. I keep checking the page count to see if it's lying. It isn't. Priya, 31, lawyer · Mumbai
My Focus Score went from 41 to 78 in nineteen days. The app didn't yell at me once. The owl got a little dry the day I emergency-unlocked twice. Fair. Tom, 45, founder · London
I was skeptical of the journal. By week two it was the best part of my morning. Aisha, 26, nurse · Toronto
Across the closed beta, average daily screen time fell 2 hours and 14 minutes in the first three weeks.
Questions you might have
Five honest answers.
How is Brio different from Apple Screen Time?
Apple Screen Time blocks the app and stops there. Brio blocks the app and opens another door — a book, a page, a walk, a calmer feed. You spend the time you would've spent on the app on something else, deliberately. The blocker is the floor. The alternatives are the building.
What if I really need a blocked app?
There's an emergency exit — through a short conversation with the owl, with an escalating cooldown (two minutes, then five, then ten, then fifteen) and a small score cost. We don't pretend you'll never need a blocked app. We make sure the want and the use aren't the same gesture.
Can I just turn the whole thing off in iOS Settings?
Yes. You can revoke Screen Time access any time you want. Brio notices, freezes your streak for a day, and starts decaying it after that. The owl will be matter-of-fact about it. This is your phone, not a prison.
Where does my data go?
Nowhere. Your blocking choices, your journal entries, your reading progress, and your score history all live on the phone. No login. No cloud. No analytics about your usage. If you delete the app, it goes with you.
When can I get it?
Brio is in App Store review now. Apple takes one to four weeks to clear apps that use the Screen Time framework. The day Apple says yes, this page changes. Bookmark it.