The same fight, every single night.
Your kid learns to budget their own screen time.
Rulely turns your screen-time limit into a budget your kid spends themselves. The fight moves off you.
You set the total once, when you're calm. It becomes the number they live with all day, not something you relitigate at 9 PM when they're fresh for an argument and you're running on empty.
Free on iPhone · installs in a couple of minutes. Android is in development.
The difference, in one sentence
Every screen-time app gives your kid a countdown.
Rulely gives them a budget they run themselves.
Same amount of time. Different lesson.
Sound familiar?
Tuesday, 9:14 PM
The same conversation, again.
It's not that you're not trying. It's that one running countdown puts the fight on you, every single night.
See it work
The real app, recorded. Not a mockup.
How it works
You make one calm decision. From there, your kid runs the budget. When they want more, it takes a moment's thought, for both of you.
- 1
You decide the amount, once, calmly.
Set a daily total and a bedtime. That’s the whole flow on your side. Sane defaults are built in: two hours a day, bedtime at 9. Rulely splits that total into a handful of turns for your kid, and you never think about that part again.
- 2
They spend it on their own judgment.
Each turn is time they start themselves: right after school, saved for the evening, or gone by noon. When a turn runs out, it’s gone until tomorrow. No daily fight, no daily supervision. The budget does the deciding, and so do they.
- 3
Saying yes takes a moment, not a reflex.
When they want more, asking is one button. No case to build, no back-and-forth. Approving takes a short, deliberate pause, so your yes is a decision you meant, not a tap you’ll regret at 9 PM.
They decide how to spend it.
Every morning, your kid opens the app to a number: today's screen time, split into a handful of same-length turns instead of one long countdown. What they control is the order, not the size. Use one right after school. Save the rest for the evening. Start early and be done by noon. No single sitting can eat the whole day.
Before a turn ends they get a heads-up, not a hard stop, so it's a wind-down instead of a fight. Once a turn is spent, it's spent until tomorrow. This isn't a reward they earn or a permission they wait for. It's a budget, and deciding when to spend it is theirs to run.
On your kid's phone
Today
2 of 4 turns left
Gone once it's spent. New turns tomorrow.
Your kid can still ask. They're arguing with this morning's choices, not with you.
Asking doesn't disappear. Kids will always make their case, out loud, in the room. What changes is who's on the other side of it. When they want more at night, they're not up against a tired parent running low on patience. They're up against the turns they already used earlier in the day. The ask itself is a single button: no text box to build a case in, one request a night, and nothing on their phone stages a refusal. It still needs your yes, answered on your clock.
On your kid's phone
Type your reason…
Doesn't existOne ask a night. That's the rule.
A moment to think, not a reflex to regret.
Every screen-time app makes yes as easy as no. One tap, no friction, which is exactly why limits stop holding. Rulely keeps yes possible and slows the moment down just enough to make it a decision: a brief hold, then a short pause before anything unlocks. Cancel is there the whole time. And if you simply walk away, nothing unlocks. Inaction keeps the limit.
Step 1 · A brief hold
Hold the Rulely button to start a yes. Let go early and nothing happens.
Step 2 · A short pause
Phone stays locked
You can say yes in 1:00
Nothing unlocks during the pause, and the yes still takes one more tap at the end. Walk away, and the limit simply stays.
Afterward, Rulely keeps a plain record, not a report card: how many times they asked, how many got extra time, how many stayed within the limit, how many went unanswered. A granted request is a normal outcome, logged like the rest. No streaks, no scores, nothing to feel behind on.
We kept the limit easy and made the yes deliberate. So when they push back, it's against a decision they already made, not against you.
Manages access. Doesn't watch.
Surveillance isn't trust. It's a substitute for it. Rulely chooses trust.
We can't read messages, content, or keystrokes. Rulely manages app access. It doesn't watch.
Your child's usage minutes are counted on their phone and never leave it. Before an account exists, we collect only anonymous setup analytics (which setup steps were reached), linked to you only if you go on to create an account. No data about your child is collected until you give verified consent.
COPPA compliant. No ads, ever. We don't sell data.
Delete or export everything, any time. Encrypted in transit and at rest.
Who it's for
For
Parents who already care and have already tried, and are worn out from having the same standoff every night. The ones whose limits hold some nights and slip the others, not for lack of trying, but because willpower alone was never a fair match for a tired night and a kid who's wide awake. Specifically: parents of kids 10–14, old enough to run a budget of their own, not yet old enough for full autonomy.
Not for
Parents who don't set rules at all. Parents who already enforce perfectly. Parents looking for surveillance, monitoring, or content filters. Rulely is about consistency, not visibility.
Common questions
Both give your kid one continuous countdown they don't control, and both give you a one-tap "approve" when it runs out. That's exactly where the discipline breaks down, for both of you. Rulely gives your kid the same total time as a budget they run themselves: a handful of turns across the day instead of one long countdown, so they decide when to spend it. And when you do need to say yes to more, it isn't one tap. It's a short hold, then a brief pause, with Cancel available the whole way. Same amount of time. Different lesson.
No. You still set the total minutes and the bedtime, and that part of the app never changes. What your kid controls is timing within that total: when to spend it, not how much there is. That's actually the part that teaches them anything. A fixed amount they have to plan around is time management. A number some adult enforces from outside isn't.
Set it up the way Rulely walks you through, with your child's Apple ID in Family Sharing and a Screen Time passcode only you know. After that, deleting the app or switching off its permissions isn't something your kid can quietly do. That passcode also protects the device clock, a classic dodge. If Screen Time access for Rulely ever does get switched off, the rules stop running and Rulely tells you so, plainly, in your app, with reminders until it's fixed. And if the phone can't reach Rulely for over a day, or the clock gets rolled back, the blocked apps stay blocked rather than quietly unlocking. We'd rather you have a hard conversation tonight than find out next month.
Today, Rulely supports one parent account per child, so the rules and requests live in one place. If you co-parent, the current workaround is sharing that account, so you're both looking at the same rules and the same requests. Linked accounts for two parents, with the same rules and both of you seeing requests and overrides, is coming.
A plain weekly record, not a report card. It counts what happened with your child's asks: how many times they asked for more time, how many got extra time, how many stayed within the limit, and how many went unanswered. A granted override is a normal outcome, logged like the rest. No streaks, no scores, nothing that grades you. Just what happened, so you can adjust the plan while you're rested.
No. Rulely manages which apps can open and when, not what's inside them. We can't see messages, photos, browsing, or keystrokes, and your child's usage minutes are tallied on their own phone, not sent to us. Nothing about your child is collected before you've given verified consent, and you can export or delete it all whenever you want.
No. Most apps make setting the limit and overriding it equally easy, which is why limits quietly stop holding. Rulely does the opposite: the daily amount is easy to set and easy for your kid to spend, but asking for more takes a real decision on your end. A short hold, a brief pause, one more deliberate tap. We kept the limit easy and made the override deliberate. That asymmetry is the whole product.
Now. Rulely is on the App Store for iPhone. Download it, set the rule once, and it holds tonight. Android is in development.
Free right now. If paid plans come later, families already using Rulely for free keep free access. That's not something that changes under you.
On the App Store
Stop being the one who holds the line.
Download Rulely, set the amount once, and hand the budget to your kid tonight.
Free on iPhone · Android is in development.