pickles Math for screen time.
Pickles gates the apps you pick — Roblox, YouTube, anything — until your kid earns minutes by solving math problems. Right answers bank time. Wrong ones earn nothing. No accounts, no ads, no network. Just one device, one PIN, and Mr. Pickles.
they answer
have a PIN
three steps, then it just runs.
You set it up once. Your kid uses the app on their own. There's no dashboard to babysit and no data to read.
Pick the apps to gate.
In Settings, choose which apps stay locked until earned. The picker is the standard iOS Screen Time picker — nothing weird, nothing fancy.
Kid solves math.
Hand the phone over. Ten problems at the level you set. Each right answer is a minute. Wrong answers earn nothing — no half-credit, no participation trophy.
Minutes unlock apps.
Banked minutes drain only while the gated apps are open. When the jar empties, those apps shield again. Free apps (books, music) stay open.
four screens. that's the whole app.
Three for the kid, one for you. None of them have a feed.
earned +9 min ⏱
built for parents, too.
The kid-facing app is handwritten and friendly. The parent side is deliberately boring — stock iOS settings with a PIN. That split is intentional.
No accounts. Ever.
No sign-in, no email, no cloud sync. A 4-digit PIN gates parent settings. That's the entire account system.
No network, no tracking.
Pickles runs entirely on the device. It doesn't make outbound requests, doesn't collect analytics, and has no SDKs from anyone else.
Free. No catch.
Pickles is free on the App Store. No subscription, no upsells, no premium tier, no in-app purchases. Family Sharing supported.
You set the math.
Pick the grade level (K–5), the operations (+, −, ×, ÷), and how many minutes a perfect round earns. Change it whenever.
It uses iOS Screen Time.
App gating is implemented with Apple's ManagedSettings + FamilyControls. We don't see which apps you pick — iOS handles it on-device.
No streaks. No stats.
Pickles intentionally doesn't track past sessions or build streaks. The reward is screen time. That's the whole loop.
