Now in beta · iPhone & AndroidYou stop being the one who holds the line every night.
Rulely is the screen-time app that holds the limit so you don't have to.
You're not inconsistent. You're tired. The decision you made when rested doesn't get relitigated at 9 PM — when the kid is fresh for the argument and you're running on empty.
iPhone & Android · installs in a couple of minutes.
Or get notified when the next batch opens:
The difference, in one sentence
Every screen-time app helps you set the rules.
Rulely is the one that keeps them.
Same goal. Different promise.
Sound familiar?
Tuesday, 9:14 PM
The same conversation, again.
It's not that you're not trying. It's that the rule needs to hold without you holding it.
See it work
The real app, recorded — not a mockup.
How it works
The parent who sets the rule and the parent who hears "five more minutes?" at 9 PM are two different people. One is clear-headed. The other is tired, and the kid knows it. Rulely lets the clear-headed one make the call.
- 1
Decide once, when you’re rested.
Name your child, set the rule, connect the device. Sane defaults are built in: a two-hour daily limit, bedtime at 9, everything but the essentials blocked — with phone, texts, and emergency calls always working. You can also leave a note for your tired self to read at the exact moment you’re tempted to fold.
- 2
The phone holds the line at night.
When time runs out, it locks. No daily decision, no daily fight. On both iPhone and Android, your kid gets a heads-up at 15, 5, and 1 minute before the limit, so the screen doesn’t die mid-scroll.
- 3
Override on your terms, not on reflex.
You can always say yes. It just takes a five-second hold and a sixty-second pause, so it stays a decision instead of a reflex.
Your kid can still ask. The app won't host the argument.
The asking doesn't disappear — kids make their case out loud, in the room. What Rulely removes is the second front. A request for more time is a single button: no text box to build a case in, no pile-up (a new request replaces the old one), no notification engineered to feel urgent, and no "denied" screen to melt down over. Every request still needs your yes, answered on your clock.
On your kid's phone
Type your reason…
Doesn't exist2 of 3 requests left today
Every screen time app has a one-tap "approve."
And a one-tap yes is a reflex. Rulely keeps the yes possible and takes the reflex out: to approve, you press and hold for five seconds, then there's a sixty-second pause before anything unlocks. The phone stays locked the whole time, and you can cancel right up to the end.
Step 1 · 5-second hold
Hold the Rulely button to approve 15 more minutes. Let go early and nothing happens.
Step 2 · 60-second pause
Phone stays locked
Unlocking in 0:60
Nothing unlocks until the timer ends. Change your mind any time by pressing Cancel.
Rulely also keeps score of the part you never get credit for: every night the limit holds gets logged, so your consistency becomes something you can watch add up. And after you approve extra time, the app shows you how long the decision took — there if you want to notice your own patterns, easy to ignore if you don't.
We kept the limit easy and made the override deliberate. That asymmetry is the whole product.
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.
Nothing is collected until a parent confirms consent with an emailed code. Until then, we collect nothing at all.
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, where the phone is a daily friction point but the kid is too young 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 let you set a limit — and both let you grant more time in one tap, which is exactly where the rule fails. Rulely rebuilds that moment: approving takes a five-second hold and a sixty-second pause, with Cancel available the whole time. We're not stricter than the built-in tools. We redesigned the one moment they get wrong.
Not quietly. No app is fully tamper-proof — on iPhone or Android — and we don't pretend otherwise. What Rulely promises instead: breaking the rule is loud and costly, not easy. Removing it is a deliberate, multi-step act rather than a quiet tap, your kid sees on their own screen that you've been notified, and you get the alert the moment an attempt starts. And if something breaks — a permission gets switched off, the phone's clock gets changed — the phone stays locked, not unlocked. 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 — same rules, both of you seeing requests and overrides — is coming.
Two things, and the first is the good one. Every night the limit holds gets logged, so your consistency stops being a feeling and becomes something you can watch add up. And after you approve extra time, Rulely shows you how long you took to decide — a quick yes at the end of a long day looks different from a considered one, and some parents find that useful to notice. It's only ever shown to you. Your kid never sees it.
No. Rulely can't read messages, content, or keystrokes — it manages which apps can open and for how long, and that's it. Nothing is collected until you verify consent with an emailed code, and you can export or delete everything any time.
Install Rulely on every device you want managed. Same rules, same enforcement.
No. Most apps make setting the limit and overriding it equally easy, which is why limits quietly stop holding. We kept the limit easy and made the override deliberate. That asymmetry is the whole product.
It's one app, iPhone and Android, with the same design on both: the limit holds, and saying yes takes a deliberate hold-and-pause. We're onboarding families in batches during the beta — sign up and we'll email you when there's space.
Free during beta. Paid plans after launch, pricing TBD.
Early access
Stop being the one who holds the line.
We're onboarding families in batches. Get in early and we'll email you when there's space.
Or get notified when the next batch opens:
No spam, no marketing emails. Just access.