How to block porn on iPhone so it actually stays blocked

First, the question that decides everything

Every method below answers one question differently: who holds the key? If the answer is "you", the block holds as long as you feel fine — and stops holding at the exact hour you don't. That is not a character flaw. At two in the morning, tired and alone, you are simply not the person who set the block up this morning. A blocker built for that person has to be one that the other one cannot undo.

Method 1 — Screen Time (free, already on your phone)

Apple ships a content filter with every iPhone. To turn it on:

1. Open Settings → Screen Time and turn it on if it isn't.
2. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and enable them.
3. Go to Content Restrictions → Web Content and choose Limit Adult Websites.
4. Back in Screen Time, set a Screen Time passcode — a four-digit code separate from your unlock code.

What it does well: it filters adult sites in Safari, and it removes Safari's Private Browsing while it's on. It costs nothing and takes two minutes.

Where it stops: you know the passcode. Even if you make someone else set it, Apple lets a Screen Time passcode be reset with the Apple ID on the phone — yours. The filter is also a website filter: it does not look inside apps, and it does nothing on the Mac or the PC in the next room unless you set it there too. In practice, Screen Time is a speed bump. It stops you on a good day. We wrote a separate piece on exactly how Screen Time gets bypassed.

Method 2 — A DNS filter (a profile, or a filtering app)

A DNS filter works one level below the browser. Every time any app on the phone asks "where is this site?", the answer comes from a filtering resolver that refuses whole categories — pornography, nudity, adult themes. It doesn't matter which browser you use, or whether it's in private mode: the site never resolves.

On iPhone you get this by installing a configuration profile that sets an encrypted DNS resolver, or by installing an app that does the same thing through a VPN-style tunnel. Both cover every app on the phone, which already beats Screen Time.

Where it stops: a profile you installed is a profile you can remove.Settings → General → VPN & Device Management → Remove Profile. Four taps. An app-based filter is deleted like any app. The category filter is the right tool; the problem is that it is still attached to the phone with a sticky note.

Method 3 — A supervised iPhone (the one that stays)

Supervision is an Apple mechanism designed for organisations that hand out iPhones and need settings to stick. A supervised phone can carry a configuration profile that cannot be removed from the phone itself. The Remove Profile button simply isn't there. And the same profile can forbid adding a VPN, which closes the usual back door.

That is how SELFCNTRL works on iPhone and iPad. The filter is the DNS category filter from method 2; supervision is what keeps it on. To take it off, you don't tap a button at 2am — you make a deliberate request from your account, and it takes effect after a cooling-off delay. You stay free to stop. You just can't stop on an impulse.

Setting it up takes about ten minutes, once:

1. Create your space — one email address, nothing else.
2. Plug the iPhone into a Mac or a Windows PC with a cable and run the SELFCNTRL supervisor. It puts the phone in supervised mode. This is the only step that needs a computer.
3. From your account, scan a QR code with the phone's camera. The profile installs and seals itself.
4. Pick your pace — cut it dead, or four locked days a week that climb to seven — and, if you want, a night curfew that cuts the internet entirely between, say, 11pm and 7am.

After that there is nothing to open every day, no password to remember, and no fight to win at night. Tightening the block takes effect at once. Loosening it waits twenty-four hours, and the floor never drops below where you set it.

What supervision does not do

People hear "supervised" and picture a company phone. It isn't that. Supervision here does one thing: keep the filter from being taken off. Nobody reads your messages or photos, no one can wipe the phone or see where it is, and no report goes to anyone — filtering works on categories, not on a list of what you looked at, so there is nothing to report. Your history stays yours. It is written out plainly in the privacy policy.

The three methods, side by side

The bet

Every blocker claims to be unbeatable, so we put money on it: on a device we locked, if you manage to strip the filter off by your own means, we send you $100 on top of a full refund. The details are in the refund policy.