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Network-Level Bedtime Curfew That Locks Every Device a Person Owns, Including Cellular Bypass

saas real project • building

A small but emotionally direct thread captured a recurring failure mode: people set an intention to be in bed by 10pm, blink, and it's 2am. They've tried dumb alarms and they don't work. Existing apps (Brick, Opal, ScreenZen) lock individual devices, but a determined user just opens the laptop, or drops to LTE. The thread surfaced an actual workaround — Google Wi-Fi parental rules to lock yourself out of the network at a schedule — which is the strongest signal that the demand exists at the network layer, not the app layer.

builder note

Real product is a tiny pluggable router (or DNS profile) plus a phone VPN config that routes cellular through it after curfew. Sell the self-binding angle, not parental control — the customer is a 34-year-old who admits they cannot trust themselves at 11:47pm. Pricing: a $99 one-time hardware + $5/mo for the DNS service. Don't make this a kid product or you'll lose the actual willing-to-pay buyer.

landscape (5 existing solutions)

Plenty of single-device focus apps; plenty of router parental controls. Nothing combines self-binding (you can't disable it from the device once set), multi-device coverage, and a cellular-fallback story. The Google-Wi-Fi workaround in the thread is the closest thing to a real product — except it requires Google Wi-Fi and doesn't address LTE.

Brick $59 NFC tag + free app. Single-device, requires you tap the brick. Trivial to defeat by walking to your laptop, and can't enforce on a partner's tablet you also use.
Opal $99/yr device-side blocker. Has had ongoing community requests to lock its own settings behind Screen Time PIN — meaning it's still on-device-defeatable.
ScreenZen Free, friction-only, single-device. Doesn't touch the laptop or the cellular bypass.
Apple Screen Time Downtime Per-device, easily disabled with passcode, doesn't span to your work laptop or PS5.
Pi-hole / Eero Family Profiles Network-level blocking exists for kids but is engineered as a parental tool, not a self-binding adult curfew, and falls apart the moment any device drops to LTE.

sources (2)

reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/comments/1s8bz44/a... "Looking for a product that does this, can't find any. You say you'll go to bed by 10pm and then blink its 2am." 2026-04-14
reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/comments/1s8bz44/a... "If you have Google WiFi, you can set up a parental rule to lock yourself out of the network on a schedule. I hate knowing I'm using mobile data when scrolling reddit or YouTube. If you lock out all your mobile devices, you can't even turn off the lock; you need to be on WiFi." 2026-04-14
sleepscreen-timehabitnetworkself-bindingwellness