For some people this is easy. This is for the people it isn't easy for.
I tried to quit for more than ten years. My record was six months. Then one random urge, or just boredom, changed all my plans — and you know how that ends.
I'm not a psychologist or a doctor. I'm a programmer. There'll be no research summaries or statistics here: the brain-science articles have been written a hundred times over, and nobody ever quit because of them. This is something else — what I worked out on myself over those years, and what finally worked.
Why "just stop" doesn't work
The decision to quit is made by one person, and cancelled by somebody else entirely.
The first one is calm and clear-headed, sitting there in the evening after an honest conversation with himself. The second shows up a month later, at night, when he's bored or feeling low. They aren't evenly matched, and the second one always wins: he needs two seconds and three taps.
So willpower has almost nothing to do with it. You're not weak — you're fighting on the wrong ground. As long as the path from "I want to" to "I'm watching" takes a few seconds, no promise to yourself will block it.
Which brings me to what took me ten years to see: don't try to stop wanting it — make the path longer.
What it actually costs you
The worst part isn't even the time spent watching.
Afterwards you just lie there. Scrolling the feed, watching clips, chilling. You're relaxed, and now nothing demanding sounds appealing; your head won't focus. Complete fog, and it lasts the rest of the day.
That's the real price: not half an hour, but the whole day you never got started on.
The people around you take the hit too. Relationships with the people you live with get worse — and they get worse precisely in the moments you most want to be left alone. And it works like nicotine: over time you need a bigger dose, and things you wouldn't have watched before slowly become normal.
Why it isn't your fault
Here's the way of thinking about it that helps me.
Picture someone who's been drinking for years. He's sick of it himself, he wants to stop, and he can't, because the habit is stronger than he is. If somebody walked up and handed him a pill that made the wanting go away, he'd take it without thinking twice.
He isn't a bad person. He got hooked, and now he can't cope.
Porn is the same thing, just less visible: a person acts on impulse, maybe several times a day, for months, and can't stop on his own. It isn't a disease and it isn't a verdict. It's a weak spot. Everybody has one — the job is to admit it and not let it run your life.
What you can do right now, with no app at all
This works on any phone and costs nothing. Start here, even if you never install anything afterwards.
Turn on Private DNS. Settings → Network & internet → Private DNS → "Private DNS provider hostname". Enter adult-filter-dns.cleanbrowsing.org and save. Your phone will stop opening porn domains in every browser and app at once. It's the strongest free layer there is, and it keeps working even if you later delete everything else.
Turn on SafeSearch in Google. A good share of these episodes don't start with a website — they start with an image search.
Open Digital Wellbeing (called Screen Time on some phones). You can set limits there for your browser and for individual apps. On its own it's weak: it comes off in a couple of seconds. But it shows you honest numbers, and seeing your own numbers is half the battle.
Where these methods run out: they don't look at what's on your screen. A new site that isn't on any list will open. So will a clip in a social feed.
What the app does
Now for what I ended up building. It's called KarosGuard. It's free — no ads, no subscriptions. There's an Android version, from Android 6 onwards, so it runs on old cheap phones too, and a Windows version. It's translated into 24 languages. There is no iPhone version.
There are no secrets in it, and explaining how it works is easier for me than promising miracles. There are three layers.
Domain lists. More than a million porn domains are cut off at the network level — much like the Private DNS above, except the list is assembled from several sources at once and updates itself.
Reading what's on screen. Lists are always behind: these sites move to new addresses every week. So the app looks at the address of the open page and at its text, and closes what isn't on any list. Nothing is sent anywhere: the analysis happens on the phone itself, and neither pages nor screenshots ever leave it.
A delay on your own decision. This is the answer to "the clear-headed one decides, the weak one cancels". You can switch the protection off, but not instantly: a full day passes from the moment you tap it. Cancelling the delay takes one tap, at any second. An urge doesn't survive a day — a decision to come back does.
Plus the things that help you hold on rather than just not look: a day counter, a calendar, and the option to connect someone close to you, who'll find out if the protection stops working.
What the app can't do
This is probably the most important part, and it's the part nobody writes.
False blocks happen. Sometimes a site you actually needed gets closed, simply because the wrong words turned up on the page. I don't pretend otherwise, and I fix them by hand: there's a button right on the block screen, one tap and the address reaches me. Nothing else does — not who you are, not what you were looking for. The messages are anonymous, and you can write anything else you like in them.
This isn't treatment. The app removes easy access, not the wanting. If something bigger sits behind the habit — loneliness, anxiety, insomnia — the app won't help with that, and I'm not going to pretend it will.
It lives on your phone and your computer. Anything outside them is none of its business.
What to do if you relapse
Relapsing is normal. I relapsed after six months, more than once.
What helps: start counting again the same day, not "from Monday". Monday is another four days, and four days is enough to give up on the whole thing. That's why the app has a calendar and a day counter — and your best streak stays in it even after the current one resets. You actually lived those days; taking them away would be dishonest.
And one more thing: tell somebody. Even one person. Secrecy is half of the habit's strength.
In short
For ten years I tried to talk myself out of it, and it never worked once. What did work was different: take away the easy access, and stretch the path to a relapse far enough that the urge runs out first.
A digital habit, it turns out, can only be beaten by digital means.
Common questions
Can you block porn on a phone for free?
Yes. Private DNS in the Android settings costs nothing and works across every browser at once — the steps are above. KarosGuard is free too: no ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases.
Do I need root?
No. Neither Private DNS nor the app needs root access.
Does it work in every browser?
Private DNS works at the system level, so it covers every browser and app at once rather than a single one. The app adds analysis of the open page on top of that.
Does the app collect data about what I watch?
No. The analysis runs on the phone; addresses, page text and screenshots are never sent anywhere. If you tap "report" on the block screen yourself, all that reaches me is the site address and the reason it was blocked.
Is there an iPhone version?
No, and none is planned for now. There are Android (6 and up) and Windows versions.
What if it blocks a site I need?
Tap the button on the block screen — the address reaches me and I'll fix the rules. False blocks do happen, and I fix them.
