Holiday edition · Nov 26 to Jan 1
Heading home for the holidays? Count your likely phone hours, then put a pause before each one.
Your Screen Time daily average
Which stretch?
Free on iPhonePick the two or three apps you drift into, put a shield in front of them for the whole break, and keep a short timed way in for photos and replies. Willpower runs thin by the third day of family, food and spare hours. A small pause at the moment of reaching does the work for you, all the way from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.
The turkey has another hour. Your uncle is explaining a podcast. Your thumb finds Instagram before you notice you reached.
Now picture the same moment with a shield: PROTECTED. You chose to protect this app. Two buttons. Go Back takes you to the room you are in. Use a Pass gives you ten minutes and locks again by itself.
You don't need more willpower in December. You need one extra second at the moment you reach.
Go to Settings, then Screen Time. On iOS 27 tap Daily Average for a week or day view, and scroll down for Pickups and Notifications, as Apple's iOS 27 Screen Time guide (2026) explains. On older iOS versions it is under See All App & Website Activity.
For one meal, often yes. Over a nine-day break it tends to fade, because the basket only covers the table. A pause on the specific apps you drift into works everywhere: the couch, the guest room, the airport.
Yes. You choose which apps get a shield. If you only pick, say, Instagram, TikTok and a news app, your Camera, Messages and Maps behave normally.
Tap Use a Pass at the shield, pick 5 or 10 minutes and the reason Post. When the Pass ends the app relocks on its own, even if FocusPass is closed.
No. It runs in your browser, sends nothing anywhere and forgets everything when you close the tab.
Yes. Free includes native shields, Go Back and Focus Saves, timed Passes, automatic relocking, one Wallet, one Focus Zone and one Deep Focus session a day. FocusPass Pro adds more Zones and Wallets, Task Access and full history; the yearly plan has a free trial for eligible new subscribers.
The calculator multiplies your own daily average by the days in the stretch. A four-hour day across the nine days from Christmas Eve (Thursday, December 24, 2026) to New Year's Day (Friday, January 1, 2027) comes to 36 hours. We divide by 16 waking hours a day to show the share, which is an assumption, not a measurement.
| Daily average | Thanksgiving (4 days) | Dec 24 to Jan 1 (9 days) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 hours | 8 h | 18 h |
| 4 hours | 16 h | 36 h |
| 6 hours | 24 h | 54 h |
Holiday days often run longer than normal ones, with more downtime and travel, so treat the result as a floor rather than a forecast.
| Method | Covers | Photos and texts | Lasts the break? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone basket | The dinner table | Phone is out of reach | Usually one meal |
| Airplane mode | Everything | Texts stop too | Hard with family plans to make |
| Screen Time limit | Chosen apps | Work normally | Limits can be ignored by default |
| FocusPass shield | Chosen apps, any room | Work normally | Built for it: Passes relock |
The Screen Time row comes from Apple: by default, Screen Time limits can be ignored once reached, per Apple's iOS 26 guide (2026).
We built Passes around a reason ("Post", "Reply", "Check something") because a holiday photo is a fine reason to open Instagram. Forty minutes of other people's holidays usually isn't what you meant to do.
One limit: FocusPass blocks whole apps, not single feeds or tabs, and blocking always happens on the iPhone, not on Apple Watch.
Set it up in a few minutes now, so the pause is already there on Thursday, November 26.
Updated November 2026