Skip to content
Feature guide

Prayer Lock: pray before you scroll

How Prayer Lock works, why putting prayer before your phone makes a difference, and how to set it up in under two minutes.

Updated 1 min readWorks on iPhone

A morning coffee table with a phone set aside

What Prayer Lock does

Prayer Lock keeps the apps you choose closed until you’ve prayed. Open one of them before your prayer and you’ll see a gentle reminder instead of your feed. Finish your prayer and check-in, and everything opens again for the rest of the day.

Why pray before you scroll

Most of us reach for our phone within minutes of waking up. Once the news, messages and notifications are in, a quiet moment with God gets pushed later, and often forgotten. Prayer Lock turns that reflex around: the first thing you open becomes prayer.

“My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.”

Psalm 5:3 (KJV)

Set it up in four steps

  1. Open Prayer LockIn the PrayerForYou app, open the Prayer Lock settings.
  2. Allow Screen Time accessiPhone asks for permission once, so Prayer Lock can pause the apps you pick.
  3. Choose your distractionsPick the apps or categories that usually win your mornings.
  4. Pray to unlockEach day, finish your prayer and check-in and your apps open again.
A woman walking a sunlit forest path
The goal isn’t less phone. It’s more of the life around it.

Tips for making it stick

  • Start with just one or two apps, the ones you open first in the morning.
  • Pair it with a place: same chair, same cup of coffee, same time.
  • On busy days, a one-line honest prayer still counts. Keep the streak gentle.
  • New to praying on your own? Start with our simple guide for beginners.

Keep exploring