Watchfulness: the app fast

This Watchfulness beta includes the Church’s fast and ordinary fast setup. New Sealed fasts, daily allowances, Allow Only setup, multi-day pauses and category selections are unavailable while their device checks continue. Saved choices and existing accepted protection are preserved. Broader device, accessibility, notification and subscription checks remain open. iPhone and iPad use Screen Time; Mac offers a Safari site fast.

What the app fast is

Watchfulness is a voluntary fast from chosen apps and websites. The Church's fast follows Orthros's fasting calendar and the calendar style already selected in your settings. It does not count devotion or decide a spiritual rule for you. Keep questions of spiritual practice with your priest and parish.

Find, create and edit a fast

The overview starts with New fast, then groups existing fasts by Active, Upcoming, Needs attention and Saved. Each row shows its choices, schedule, status and lift protection. Open the row to inspect or change that fast.

New fast offers Start now and Schedule a fast. Daily allowance setup is unavailable in this beta. Setup proceeds through Apps, Timing, Protection and Review. Back revisits a step; Cancel discards the unsaved draft. Save only after reviewing the actual scope, schedule and protection. Opening a suggestion prepares a draft rather than activating a restriction.

For a saved fast, Edit fast enters the same focused steps. Pause belongs to the eligible saved summary, not the editing toolbar. Protected fasts show their accepted terms instead of bypass controls.

Keep the Church's fast

1. 1.Open Watchfulness from Your Lamp or the Library’s Fasting screen.
2. 2.Choose New fast, then The Church’s fast. Complete Apple’s Screen Time authorization when requested.
3. 3.Choose individual apps and websites in Apple’s picker. Add typed domains if wanted.
4. 4.Review the selection and choose Keep this fast.

The Church’s fast follows the calendar style already chosen in Orthros. It remains free, always liftable after one Jesus Prayer, and cannot be sealed. Saving it on a fast-free day preserves the choices for the next fast day.

New category selections are unavailable in this beta. Previously saved categories remain in effect and can be retained or removed while making other permitted edits. A category means all its included apps or sites, rather than only the individual items shown alongside it. Category enforcement and individual exceptions still need physical verification. Allow Only and Timed openings require individual choices.

Preview’s separate, labeled diagnostic can temporarily ignore the calendar for testing. It is not the ordinary Church’s fast.

What the shield shows

Apple presents the restriction interface. Orthros supplies its title, prayer line, doorway artwork and supported buttons. Close leaves the restricted app. Begin prayer starts the wait when a lift is allowed; the next action is Lift now for a one-prayer wait. A Sealed fast has no opening action.

A shield button cannot directly open Orthros. A rope request may offer a notification, or you can open Watchfulness yourself to continue it.

A transition or returning restriction may show Apple’s standard Restricted screen. Leave the app or site and reopen it to request a fresh presentation. Missing custom artwork does not establish that the restriction has ended.

Lifting a fast with one prayer

On an eligible shield, tap Begin prayer, pause with the Jesus Prayer for twelve seconds, then tap Lift now. Pressing sooner keeps the prayer wait in place. The free Church’s lift lasts fifteen minutes. The shield may disappear immediately, or the chosen app or site may need to be reopened.

A shield lift applies only to the app or picker site that requested it within the named fast. Inside Watchfulness, Lift selected apps or sites lets you review individual choices before continuing to the prayer. With a category, expand it in Apple’s picker and choose individual apps or sites to open; the rest of the category stays kept.

Lift this fast opens that fast’s selection, including its typed domains, when that action is available. The review identifies the scope and return time before confirmation. A selected-item lift does not clear a separate typed-domain filter. Another fast, an active seal or Never Allowed can still keep the same app or site.

If the return cannot be prepared, the lift stays unavailable and Watchfulness shows an error. Foreground reconciliation can repair an expired lift; it does not promise that every system callback arrives at an exact second.

Your passions and your own fasts

Acedia and the Church’s fast remain free. The other seven canonical passions are gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, dejection, vainglory and pride. Their readings and healing virtues remain available without buying anything.

Ordinary Orthros+ settings include additional passion and custom fasts, the desert, the vigil and longer waits. New seals, daily allowances and Allow Only setup are unavailable in this beta. The separate local Preview can expose ordinary premium controls through its labeled access setting. This is not a purchase or subscription; the Orthros+ sheet does not yet sell a plan. Premium controls remain locked in TestFlight until real subscription support is available.

Losing paid access does not remove an active accepted seal or protected allowance. Their existing terms and end are preserved. After protection ends, free fasts use their free settings and unsupported paid fasts wait. Saved choices remain available to inspect.

The measure, the wait, the lift

Strict keeps the fast during its chosen schedule. Until Vespers uses the evening prayer reminder already configured in Orthros. A small measure provides a daily opening inside the broader schedule; Open from and Open until name that opening.

The wait may be one Jesus Prayer, 10, 33 or 100 knots in Orthros, or a lengthening wait. The lengthening wait moves through twelve seconds, a minute, five minutes and fifteen minutes within a civil day. These are waiting periods, not prayer counts.

The lift review shows the available durations and the exact return time. The free Church’s lift stays fixed at fifteen minutes. Ordinary premium fasts can offer shorter choices within their saved lift policy. Until Vespers requires a future evening reminder. An existing opening keeps its accepted end.

Daily allowances and protection

Daily usage and Timed openings are separate from sealing an entire scheduled fast. New allowances and allowance protection cannot be configured in this beta. The following explains previously saved allowances; their data and accepted protection remain intact.

Daily usage totals reported foreground use across the selected apps, categories and picker sites together, including use earlier in the civil day. This needs iOS 17.4 or later. Typed domains cannot be measured this way; website usage depends on Screen Time reporting. The interface reports whether the threshold was reached rather than inventing a remaining-minute count.

For an ordinary usage allowance, reaching the threshold makes the fast follow its schedule, measure and permitted lifts. A previously saved hard daily limit uses Protect until the next day chosen before reaching it. Once exhaustion is reported, the accepted choices and settings stay fixed until the next civil day, with no in-app lift, reset, stop, deletion or economia.

Timed openings keeps one individual app or picker site and grants a chosen number of access windows each day. Previously saved weekdays, count, duration and wait remain in effect. Time continues while the app is closed; reopening during an existing window does not spend another opening. If protection was chosen beforehand, the first granted opening fixes the terms until the next civil day. Remaining openings retain their wait and duration; editing or economia cannot add another.

Protected usage and timed openings use all-day schedules and Strict. They cannot be combined with a separate seal or daily lift limit. A permitted reset is an explicit reviewed action, not an effect of editing or restarting. It remains unavailable while protection is active. Full physical allowance and reset verification remains open.

Praying the rope

For a knot wait, the shield changes to Prepare prayer rope after the first prayer pause. Continue in Orthros’s prayer rope. Only saved progress in the fresh session associated with that request completes the wait; earlier sessions do not substitute for it.

A saved fast can show Continue prayer for a pending rope or Review the lift after completion. Review the chosen apps and return time before confirming. Cancel lift abandons the request without opening the fast.

After permission has been granted, the shield action can request a local notification. A current notification is routed to its matching pending rope. An old or unknown request returns to Watchfulness. Open Watchfulness directly if the notification is delayed, dismissed or unavailable. Actual notification tap and Focus behavior for this current feature still require verification.

Sealed and Economia

New seals, including Sealed with weekly economia, are unavailable in this beta. Existing accepted seals retain the terms below.

Sealed has no in-app opening until its scheduled end. There is no prayer lift, snooze, pause or economia. You cannot stop, delete, disable, shorten, or edit its accepted apps, sites or settings to bypass it. Restarting Orthros, foreground reconciliation, synced edits or deletions, and subscription lapse preserve the accepted selection and deadline. The physical bypass matrix remains a verification requirement, not a claim established by this help text.

Sealed with weekly economia is a separate choice made before sealing. Its one-hour opening is available once in the civil week beginning on Monday and applies only to fasts that chose it. It cannot open a Sealed fast or be added after sealing. Review the included fasts and return time before using the hour.

Sealed does not promise an uninstall lock. iOS controls Screen Time access and app removal. Revoking access or deleting Orthros can remove restrictions. Device passcodes and Screen Time protections vary by operating system and configuration; Orthros uses supported APIs and does not claim an unbreakable lock.

Allow only and global exceptions

Allow Only setup is unavailable in this beta. Previously accepted Allow Only fasts keep their individual essentials and restriction behavior. Website policy is separate: Leave websites unchanged, Allow picker sites only, or Allow typed sites only. Allowing a browser app does not automatically allow pages or embedded websites inside it.

Watchfulness settings also contain Always and Never Allowed, saved on this phone. Whole categories are not supported in these global lists. Never Allowed wins ordinary conflicts and continues during ordinary lifts. Always Allowed makes exceptions to ordinary fasts; it does not open an accepted seal or protected allowance.

Review shows changes deferred by existing seals, protected allowances and promised openings. A later settings edit cannot rewrite those accepted terms. Other active fasts continue to apply when one fast is lifted. Actual Allow only and overlap behavior still need the physical acceptance checks.

Pausing and resuming

New multi-day pauses are unavailable in this beta, including for the free Church’s fast. An existing saved pause keeps its accepted return time. Open its review to check that time or choose Resume now. Automatic return still requires separate device verification.

Previously saved allowance pauses retain their accepted terms. New pauses cannot be created in this beta. Protection that has already begun still prevents pausing. Daily usage measurement continues during a pause; any reached limit in the current period applies when the saved schedule resumes. Resume before editing a paused allowance’s protected settings.

A pause is separate from a temporary lift. It does not reset an allowance, erase accepted protection or change an existing opening’s end. It cannot bypass an active seal, protected allowance, another fast or Never Allowed. Review any failure or unchecked status instead of assuming the pause was applied.

Guard the rule and the vigil

Guard the rule is a free choice in Watchfulness after the Church's fast is set up. It uses that fast's chosen apps and sites from opening a prayer-rule session until the session completion is saved. Leaving the prayer unfinished does not complete it. Ordinary reading or listening to guided audio is not a completed prayer-rule session.

The vigil begins at the configured evening prayer reminder and opens after the morning rule's completion is saved. It has a sixteen-hour limit. Set the reminder in your existing prayer-rule settings rather than expecting an invented evening time.

Sites, browsers, and Private Browsing

Typed domains use Apple's web filter and show the system restricted-site page, which has no Orthros lift button. Open Watchfulness to lift a fast that includes typed domains. Applying this filter disables Safari Private Browsing while the filter remains set.

Websites chosen in Apple's picker can display the custom shield in Safari. Apple's root-domain and www selections can behave differently, so choose the specific site shown by the picker and verify it on your device. If typed filtering also covers the same site, lifting only its picker token does not remove that separate restriction.

The W0 development test on an iPhone running iOS 27 beta restricted a typed domain in Safari, Chrome, and an embedded Safari browser. The Mail-link path was not tested because Mail was absent. This is evidence for those tested browser paths, not a guarantee for every embedded browser or every iOS version.

In the tested Safari typed-domain case, an already-open page changed without relaunching Safari. Other website trials required fresh navigation or restarting Safari, and some mixed app/site lifts still showed a standard restriction after the selected token was removed. Reload, then relaunch Safari if needed, and report the exact browser and selection rather than treating every lingering page as the same issue.

On iPad and Mac

The iPad app uses the same authorization, picker, and typed-domain controls, but the W0 physical runtime results came from one iPhone. Select apps and picker sites separately on each device; opaque Screen Time selections are device-bound and are invalidated by revocation.

On Mac, open Watchfulness to choose sites for the Church’s fast and enable the Orthros Watchfulness extension in Safari with the required site permissions. Safari may acknowledge updated choices or a lift later than the app saves them; inspect the displayed connection state rather than assuming an immediate update. This is a Safari site fast, not Mac app shielding or a restriction in other browsers. Unsupported saved fast settings remain unchanged and are identified separately.

If a fast will not lift

An active Sealed fast and an exhausted protected usage allowance have no in-app opening before their shown end. A protected timed-opening allowance permits only its remaining scheduled openings, with the original wait and duration.

Otherwise, reopen the app or website, then review Watchfulness. Check for overlapping fasts, Never Allowed, typed filtering, or a picker selection needing review. Confirm which apps and sites were included in the lift. Do not repeatedly submit a grant while its return or current status is unconfirmed.

W0 observed app and isolated picker-site lifts, but also lingering standard restrictions in mixed app/site cases. TestFlight and broader device behavior remain separate checks.

If the shield does not appear

Check Screen Time access, the fast’s current schedule, its selection, and any active lift or pause. A daily usage allowance does not restrict merely because it was saved; it waits for the limit to be reported reached. A measurement error or Checking state is not confirmation that an allowance is active.

For the Church’s fast, check today’s calendar. For the vigil, check the evening reminder. If the calendar could not be read, refresh Watchfulness rather than relying on yesterday’s verdict.

Check Settings > Screen Time > Apps with Screen Time Access. Some systems also expose Screen Time Restrictions on the app’s Settings page. After revocation, authorize again and choose individual apps and picker sites again; old tokens are invalid. A temporary startup access check is not itself a revocation.

If the rope notification did not arrive

Check notification permission for the Orthros app you are using and its Focus settings, including Time Sensitive notifications. Delivery to Notification Center does not guarantee a visible banner. Open Watchfulness to continue a pending rope without repeatedly requesting the notification.

W0 on development Preview 95 verified delivered-list notifications and an actual tap into the W0 lab while Do Not Disturb was on. It did not verify banner interruption. That earlier lab result does not prove delivery or tap routing in the current feature; those checks remain open.