Is Covenant Eyes worth it? A private option to consider

If you are asking whether Covenant Eyes is worth it for you, a private option to weigh is Escape, which blocks porn on your own iPhone, iPad and Mac with no account and starts with a free Safari blocker. You can turn it on tonight, live with it for a week, and only then decide whether you want Premium. Nothing about what you browse is sent to anyone, and Escape never sees it.

Start with what you need

Before you pay for anything, be honest with yourself about what you want help with. Most people land on one or more of these:

• You want porn to stop loading. That is blocking, and Escape's Safari blocker does it for free.
• You want it to hold on a bad night. That is Deep Block, Strict Mode and app blocking, in Premium.
• You want a person involved. That is the protection passcode, which a partner or friend can hold.
• You want it private. That is all of Escape: no account, and nothing sent to anyone.

Knowing which of these matters most tells you what to set up first, and whether you need to pay at all.

What you get for free

• The Safari blocker, on iPhone, iPad and Mac. It blocks 40,000+ known adult sites the moment you turn it on, and because the list is curated, it also catches mirror and variant addresses of big sites.
• A private streak counter that counts the days since you last watched porn. It shows minutes in the first hour, lives on your phone, and can sit on your Home Screen as a widget. How the streak counter works.
• The first day of each of the 28 short recovery courses in the app, and every lesson free to read on this website.

Give the free version a week or two. If the late nights stay quiet and you never reach for another browser, that may be all you need.

What Premium adds

Premium is for when you need the wall to hold even on the nights you do not want it to.

• Deep Block covers every browser on iPhone and iPad, including private and incognito tabs, and holds through Safari's "Reload Without Content Blockers".
• Strict Mode puts a wait of 30, 60 or 120 minutes in front of turning blocking off. What it takes to make blocking stick.
• App blocking, with blocking windows that switch on by themselves: The Late-Night Window (10 PM to 6 AM), The After-Work Lull (5 PM to 8 PM) and The Quiet Morning (5 AM to 8 AM).
• Blocked Words, so a Safari search for a word you choose does not load.
• The panic button and the 90-second urge tool, for the moment an urge hits.
• The protection passcode, for keeping someone involved.

Keeping someone in your corner

If having a person involved is what helps you follow through, you can have that and keep your privacy. Give the protection passcode to your partner or a friend you trust. Turning protection off then needs them. They hold the key and nothing else, because nothing about what you browse is sent to them, or to anyone. If you are a couple doing this together, here is a setup for two. On the free version, start with Escape's PIN Protection: let them set the PIN, and Escape will not open without it.

A simple way to decide

1. Tonight: turn on the free Safari blocker. It needs no account.
2. This week: notice when you slip: which hours, which apps, which browsers.
3. If it is other browsers or private tabs: Deep Block covers them.
4. If it is a certain hour or a certain app: set a blocking window around it, and add Strict Mode's wait.
5. If you want a person in it: hand them the protection passcode.

Escape blocks porn in Safari for free, extends to every browser with Deep Block, and adds a 90-second urge ritual, practice games that retrain how you meet an urge, and 28 short courses on identity and the long arc of recovery. No account, no personal tracking.

Rated 4.8 on the App Store

More on this topic in Privacy in recovery apps, or go deeper with the Who you became in private course.

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