Slack is a strange thing to search "how to block," because for most people who search it, the problem isn't wasted time in the way TikTok wastes time. It's boundary time — evenings, weekends, the twenty minutes before you fall asleep — getting quietly eaten by a work tool that never actually clocks out, even when you have.
What actually makes Slack hard to close
Channel-based notifications spread across however many workspaces and channels you're in, and an @here or @channel ping carries a felt urgency that a normal message doesn't — it's designed to reach everyone active right now, which makes it feel important even when it usually isn't time-sensitive at all. A green "active" dot next to your name adds a second pressure familiar from consumer messaging apps, except here it can read as a signal about how available you are for work, which makes going offline feel like it needs an excuse. And because Slack is explicitly a work tool, checking it outside work hours doesn't trigger the same "am I wasting time" self-check that a purely social app eventually does — it feels responsible, even when it's actually just anxiety about missing something.
The built-in iPhone route, and where it gives way
An iOS Screen Time App Limit on Slack behaves like it does on any app: a warning, a lock screen, one "Ignore Limit for Today" button that clears it in a tap, needing only a Screen Time passcode you set and know yourself. iOS Focus modes can silence Slack's notifications outside a defined work schedule too, which helps more directly than a time limit — but both are easy to override the moment "just checking one thing" feels urgent enough, and a work notification is very good at feeling urgent.
The built-in Android route, and where it gives way
Digital Wellbeing's App Timer greys out Slack's icon at your limit and offers more time the instant you tap it, adjustable or removable from Settings at any point. Android's own Do Not Disturb schedules can mute notifications after hours similarly to iOS Focus — but on a personal device, the same person who scheduled the quiet hours is the one who can un-schedule them the moment a notification preview looks important enough to check anyway.
What changes when the toll is three questions
Mr. Grummel's toll doesn't know or care whether a Slack notification is genuinely urgent — three questions sit in front of the app either way, and answering them costs a few minutes of real thought whether you're about to check a time-sensitive request or just anxiously scanning for nothing in particular. Those few minutes are enough space to actually ask yourself whether this specific check can wait until tomorrow, which the reflexive, guilt-driven open never gives you the chance to do.
A realistic day
Right now: an evening notification preview pulls you back into Slack "just to see," and twenty minutes of scrolling channels you don't need to be in follows, none of which needed to happen tonight — and because it happened on your own phone rather than a work laptop, there's no closing-the-laptop-lid moment to mark the day as actually over. With the toll in place: the same pull runs into three questions first. Something genuinely urgent still gets checked — the toll isn't trying to make you unreliable, and it never asks whether the notification looks work-related before charging its few minutes. Most nights, though, the few minutes of thinking are enough to notice it can wait until morning, and it does.