How to block porn on your iPhone

Before you start

These steps are for your own iPhone and take about 10 minutes. Have a friend with you for Step 3, because they'll set a passcode you don't know.

Step 1: Turn on Apple's adult-site filter (2 minutes)

1. Open Settings and tap Screen Time. If it's off, turn it on first.
2. Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and switch it on.
3. Tap App Store, Media, Web, & Games, then Web Content.
4. Choose Limit Adult Websites.
5. Under Never Allow, tap Add Website and type in the two or three sites you actually end up on. Apple's list is long, but it doesn't know your habits.

Give it a minute, then close Safari and open it again before you test it.

Step 2: Cover every app, not only Safari (5 minutes)

Apple's filter looks at websites. A family DNS filter works one level lower: it stops your phone from finding adult sites at all, in any app, on Wi-Fi and on mobile data.

On iPhone, you get that from an app, not a setting.

1. Install 1.1.1.1: Faster Internet by Cloudflare from the App Store.
2. Open the menu, then Advanced > Connection options > DNS settings.
3. Choose 1.1.1.1 for Families, the option that blocks adult content.
4. Go back and turn the main switch on. Your iPhone will ask to add a VPN configuration. Allow it.

Worth knowing. Don't type a family DNS address into your Wi-Fi settings and call it done. On iPhone, a DNS you type there only works on that one Wi-Fi network and never on mobile data. And if iCloud Private Relay is on, Safari skips it anyway. The app route covers both, because Private Relay steps aside for VPN-style apps.

This step also locks Google SafeSearch for you. In our own test on 16 October 2026, Cloudflare's family filter forced SafeSearch on every Google search. That matters because you can't lock SafeSearch for your own account from inside Google. More on that in How to lock SafeSearch.

Our test. We checked four no-cost family filters against 42 of the best-known adult sites. Cloudflare's family filter, CleanBrowsing and AdGuard blocked all 42. OpenDNS FamilyShield missed 3. See the full results.

Step 3: Make it stick (the part most guides skip)

Here's the problem with blocking your own phone. You know the passcode.

Worse, iOS lets you reset a forgotten Screen Time passcode with your Apple Account. So if you set it up yourself, the whole wall comes down in about a minute, at exactly the hour you set it up to protect.

This isn't a you problem. Researchers who followed more than 8,000 people using a blocker saw them slowly switch to easier settings, each time expecting to switch back soon. Strict settings get chosen on calm afternoons and undone late at night.

The fix is a second person:

1. Go to Settings > Screen Time and tap Lock Screen Time Settings.
2. Hand your phone to someone you trust and let them type a four-digit code you don't see.
3. If it asks for an Apple Account for passcode recovery, they can use their own account or skip recovery entirely.

Pick someone who won't make it weird. A sibling, an old friend, a partner if that works for you. You don't owe them the whole story. "I'm trying to stay off my phone at night" is true, and it's enough.

While you're in there with them, it's worth asking them to stop the 1.1.1.1 app from being deleted: Content & Privacy Restrictions > iTunes & App Store Purchases > Deleting Apps > Don't Allow.

Worth knowing. Once you're 18, nobody can manage your Screen Time through Family Sharing, even if you ask them to. Apple only lets parents do that for members under 18. Typing the passcode on your phone is the only way to hand someone the key.

Step 4: Blur what gets sent to you (30 seconds)

Not every bad night starts with a search. Sometimes it starts with a photo someone sends you.

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Sensitive Content Warning and turn it on. From then on, a nude photo or video someone sends you in Messages or AirDrop shows up blurred. You decide whether to look.

It all happens on the phone. Apple isn't told when something gets blurred, and it never sees the photo.

What this won't catch

Every setup has holes. Here are this one's, so they don't surprise you later.

• Reddit and X stay open. So do Telegram and Discord. A filter judges a whole site, and these sites are mostly not adult, so none of the four family filters we tested touched them. If one of these is where your nights go, delete the app for a month. That beats any setting inside it.
• A second VPN app switches the filter off. Your iPhone runs one VPN-style app at a time. Turn on a different one and the family filter quietly stops.
• In the EU, some browsers sit outside Apple's filter. Browsers there can run their own engine now, and Apple doesn't require those to follow Screen Time. Step 2 still covers them.
• Private Browsing might still be there. Limit Adult Websites usually removes Safari's private tabs, but Apple doesn't promise it. Open Safari after a minute and look.

What a blocker can't do

A filter buys you a pause. It doesn't tell you what to do with it.

When the site won't load, you get maybe a minute where the old plan is gone and there's no new one yet. That minute is where the habit actually changes. Put your headphones in and try urge surfing: you find where the urge sits in your body and stay with it while it eases. If you want to know why the pull shows up when it does, start with You're not broken, you're in a loop.

That minute is also what Sherpa, the app we're building, is for. It's a few weeks out.

For tonight, try one thing: charge your phone on the other side of the room. At midnight your arm is lazier than your willpower.