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​My smart phone is the bane of my existence, just like everybody else. 

It’s fun. It’s distracting. Basically, it’s a coping mechanism with a plug. 

But also….it’s destroying my attention span. It pulls me away from my children. It’s taking up time that I really don’t have in my day to lose! 

I had been teetering on the edge of getting a “brick phone” or “dumb phone” for a while when I started getting ads for the Brick app — they’re on Instagram as @getbrick. I wasn’t seeing any get Brick app reviews, so I wasn’t sure right away.

(Worth mentioning at this point that this is not a sponsored post, there’s no affiliate link, and I paid for the tool with my own money and have had no contact with the makers of the app except the thank you note they enclosed in my order! I’m just trying to fill in the lack of get Brick app reviews for other people who might buy.)

Here are my get Brick app reviews, my recommendations, and how I think you should get started if you choose to buy it. 

My phone is a problem

and yours probably is too. 

I have tried to do a lot of the right things to deal with my phone problems. 

I deleted most of my social media accounts. And, I have Do Not Disturb set to turn on automatically an hour and a half before bedtime. And, I have a phone-free morning routine. I feel like I’m doing a good job. 

It’s still not enough. My willpower is not always perfect! Especially when I feel stressed or overwhelmed, it is so easy to fall into my phone and disappear for a while. 

And when I have a little downtime…it’s also so easy to fall into my phone and disappear for a while. 

And when I have a rare few hours to myself…it’s too easy to waste it on the phone. I could do something that’s going to build me up, nourish me, and charge me back up to go live my best life. But instead, I often just…scroll. 

I know that my best life involves less phone use than I currently have. But actually getting there in real life, with the actual needs, stressors, and responsibilities that I have, isn’t working. 

A dumb phone isn’t an option for me

Many people, I know, choose to downgrade their technology and remove the temptation by getting a flip phone or brick phone. 

And don’t get me wrong–nobody loved her Motorola Razr more than I did back in the day. 

But honestly, that isn’t going to work for me in this phase of my life. I need a smartphone for the two-factor authentication on my work email. I need the parking app in town that won’t let you put in a credit card anymore. And I need the parent portal app that my kids’ school uses to communicate with me. The phone also has so many good add-ons: I use fitness apps like Soto Method to work out from home.

I’m trapped! I really am. A flip phone is not going to allow me to do the things that I need to do on a regular basis. And I have a lot of respect for the people who just decide to live with the inconvenience. But, a little bit…I have little kids and a job and this blog and a lot to do. I can’t take on another pretty significant inconvenience right now. 

What I really need is a smart phone with an app blocker with teeth. And I found that in Brick.

Get Brick app review

Okay, so there are basically two parts to the Brick system: the Brick itself (which is what you pay for) and the app (which is free). 

The Brick is an magnetic square that you can scan with your phone to turn Brick mode on and off. I have mine stuck to my fridge, which makes it convenient to scan, but not so convenient that I can start scrolling without having to get off the couch. 

And then the app is free to download. You can download it before purchasing the Brick, but it won’t do much. 

​With the app, you set up different modes for what apps will be allowed in that mode, and then you have to scan the Brick to turn the modes on and off. 

So, if you scan into a Brick mode, and then leave your house, you’re committing to be in Brick mode all day until you get home. 

(And if you’re like, “what if there’s an emergency”, hang on, I’ll get back to that.)

Because most days, there isn’t an emergency. Most days, I am going through my day and don’t really need to be on my phone as much as I end up being. 

What I really appreciate about Brick is that keeping my phone use in check used to require a hundred little instances of willpower per day. Every time I thought about picking up my phone, I would try to resist, and sometimes I would be successful and sometimes not. 

Now, I have to exercise willpower once per day: to scan my Brick before I leave my house. And then, for the rest of the day, the decision is made: I’m not going to scroll today, because I can’t. 

My results from the Brick app

First: the happiest, calmest week of my year every year is our family camping trip. No cell service, no wifi, no data. It’s amazing how after about eight hours, my brain feels like it is unknotting. In the rest of my life, a lot of those outside influences feel like intrusive thoughts — like my mind is always racing because I’m constantly pushing in content from online about what I should or could be doing. But once I’m away from my phone at length, I always feel much more at peace. 

So I knew that I was going to like the Brick, even without any get Brick app reviews. And after some initial challenges (more on that in a sec), I really did find it to be immensely calming. 

I don’t know why, when I feel stressed, I want to scroll and give myself more input that’s going to lead to more stress. It’s not a good thing! But limiting screen time helps. 

Now, I use my Brick nearly every day. I’m still working on the best way to manage it, but I can generally stay locked all day. Some days I scan myself into some scroll time on TikTok, and some days I don’t. (I work really​ hard to keep my TikTok feed positive, but even the positive stuff can overload you with what you “should” be doing.) 

And I do feel a lot less stressed. I don’t miss all the “content” I was consuming, and I’m doing more in the real world. I think the Brick has also really supported my goals with this blog — if I had three hours to be on my phone every day in February, I had time to be blogging daily. 

And there’s a timer that tells you how long you’ve been Bricked — watching that go up is really motivating. My longest stretch so far is five days. 

I have separate Brick modes for different situations — let’s look at those!

My different Brick modes

For the first month or so, I only had one default Brick mode. You set every mode yourself.

It gives me access to:

•  calling and text messages
• my email
• Safari
• the app for my gym 
• the app for my kids’ schools
• the parking app in my town
• utilities: calculator, camera, alarms, weather, timer, notes
• Google Maps
• Spotify
• and my Apple Wallet

And then I have a separate one for school that has all of the above, but also adds access to the Google apps that I need during the school day. At first, I had them in my default setting, but I kept opening them to “check on something for work” on the weekend, and that isn’t really in the spirit of using my phone less! So breaking them out into separate modes was really useful. 

My final mode: Strict mode. Strict mode has the above list, minus my email and Safari. I’ll switch over to strict mode when I know that there’s nothing urgent that I might need, and when I don’t want to invent something urgent to use my phone over. This is truly a utilities-only setting for me: just the stuff I need and no distractions. 

Isn’t this just Do Not Disturb? What if there’s an emergency? 

The difference between Brick and using the Do Not Disturb or time limit settings that come with your smartphone is that without the physical Brick, you can’t override the settings. You could delete the app, but that counts as an emergency unbrick. 

If there’s an emergency and you must use one of your apps, you do have five “emergency unbricks” where you can unbrick your phone without using your brick. I can imagine this being necessary in some situations! But you should be able to go some time without needing it. I think it’s smart to have as an option. At the time I bought my Brick, it wasn’t totally clear what would happen if you used up your five emergency unbricks — I think it suggested you would have to delete the app and lose all your settings. 

Currently, their website is asking for feedback or suggestions for how to manage unbricks. (My opinion: after five unbricks, the app stops recognizing your Brick and you have to buy a new one. Then, you’ve functionally charged yourself $10 per emergency unbrick.) 

Some tips for getting started with your Brick

So, if you’re into the concept of the Brick and getting the best of your smartphone without the worst of it, let me give you some tips. 

The BIG ONE from my personal experience: plan to carry the Brick with you for the first week. The first thing you’ll do is set up your own Bricks with the apps that you think you need daily access to, but you are GOING to miss something important. 

Like how I set mine up but forgot the city parking app, only to find that there was no way to pay for my parking with a credit card!! 

(Honestly, I KNOW that not everyone in the world has a smartphone, but it’s like you can’t function without it.)

I ended up just not paying for parking and running into the store, but the line took a long time and it was not much fun to worry about getting a ticket! 

Similarly, there was a day in school that I couldn’t get the two-factor authentication notice on my phone, and I was in a part of the school building with no cell service, so I couldn’t get a text. 

Keeping the Brick on you for a week is going to ensure you get to take advantage of all the cool things the Brick app can do without ending up frustrated or wasting your emergency unbricks. 

Because I was carrying the Brick on me, I was able to quickly unbrick the regular way, add the app that I needed to my default mode, and rebrick. 

​Changes to Brick app

They seem to be a very new company, and they have a pretty prominent feedback form on their site, which I like. There are a few things I would like to see change…since I’m very motivated by the time spent in Brick mode, it’s a little discouraging that my timer stops when I switch from one Brick mode to another. 

Like, I need my school apps during the workday, but I don’t want to have access to them once I get home. As the app works now, I have to unbrick from my school mode, and then rebrick in my default mode. It would be nice to be able to scan the brick and have the option to switch modes without resetting the timer. 

But overall — that’s a motivation note, not an effectiveness note. And if that’s the only thing I have to quibble about, they’re in good shape. 

Mental health benefits of Brick app

The most important part! 

I’m not quite so far as feeling like I’m on that camping trip all year, but I feel a lot less mental clutter since I got my Brick two months ago. 

The content economy we live in, and that we tell ourselves is so “fun” or recreational, is exhausting. If you reduce the amount of times per day you open your social apps, you are reducing the noise and stress inside your mind. 

It’s scary to say, but…I feel like when I’m bricked for longer periods of time, it becomes easier to hear my own voice in my head rather than those of the people who scroll across my screen for a minute then are never seen again. 

$49 to make my brain feel like it did in 2008, before mobile social apps? A great value.