Waking Up is the app that revived my practice. It's the perfect example that apps aren't all bad. But I kept facing a problem where my cue for a 1hr doomscrolling felt stronger than 10m of meditation, especially if I was away from the cushion for a while.

So I built a companion to Waking Up that blocks my bad apps until I've completed my meditation in Waking Up. It works like this:

1. Instagram stays locked until Waking Up logs the day's session to Apple Health. No manual logging, it just reads the minutes when a session is marked complete, and opens the apps. The phone display can be off, even an iWatch can count, just as long its logged from the meditation app.
2. The version I actually run is a ratio: my meditation minutes have to stay ahead of my scrolling minutes for the day. Mines pretty generous but it prevents me from being in instagram for 2x the time than I've meditated.

The tool is called Tonic. It's on iOS and the freemium covers the above scenario plus more. You can also base it on steps, sunlight, or time in another app instead of meditation.

My personal reason is because instagram rewires my brain to expect gratification from material things and if my meditation doesnt keep up, it affects my mental health. It's been a great accountability and has helped me rewire my cues from scrolling to meditation.

I hope this helps someone else!