Why Freedom did not hold.
I paid for it for 2 years. I got around it every time, usually at 1am.
On Android, Freedom is an app sitting beside the apps it is meant to block. It has no authority over them and none over you.
Locked Mode helps until you uninstall Freedom itself, which takes 2 taps from the app drawer. Mine went at 01:12 and came back before the alarm.
Even intact, the block list is a list. X in the browser, a second browser, a web app pinned to the home screen: each one is a hole you found by accident and then on purpose.
Why paying for it did not make it hold.
Price is not the variable. Authority is. Freedom asks for your cooperation, which is the one thing the 1am version of you does not have.
Every consumer blocker is built to be switched off, because the alternative is refund requests. You were out-resourced by design, not weak-willed.
The mechanism that does not ask you.
Back up, then factory reset
device owner can only be assigned during setup. This erases the phone, and that is the product, not a step.
Scan one QR code
Android's own enterprise provisioning installs the blocker as device owner. It holds administrative authority. You hold none.
Choose what dies, then set the delay
the Feeds, adult sites, games, browsers. Any change waits out the delay you set while you still wanted it.
No root, no unlocked bootloader, no voided warranty. It works on essentially any modern Android.
Then there is the part no app can do: every Sunday you send one screenshot of your screen time to a person who is expecting it.