Catholic DeVice vs Brick: The Physical Wall and the Prayer Wall

We build Catholic DeVice, so read this with that in mind. Brick deserves a fair hearing, because its core idea is genuinely different from every app in this category: it moves the unlock control off your phone entirely.

What Brick does well

Brick is a small physical device. You tap your phone against it to lock your chosen apps and tap again to unlock them. Between taps, the apps are simply gone. The strength is obvious: leave the Brick at home and no 2am willpower failure can undo your decision, because the decision is not on the phone anymore. It is a one time hardware purchase rather than a subscription, and for deep work sessions and dumbphone-curious people it is a well liked tool.

Where the two part ways

Brick is a binary wall. When the wall is up there is no pause to fill, because there is no doorway at all; when the wall is down, nothing stands between you and the scroll. Catholic DeVice is a wall with a door, and the door is a prayer: mark your vice apps, and opening one meets the Praywall, a full screen Catholic prayer with a quiet countdown and an Amen before a timed window. The moment of temptation still happens, and it becomes a moment of prayer. For scheduled hard locks, Catholic DeVice has its own no-door mode: Retreats and the Cloister's schedules lock vice apps with no toll and no escape, so the binary wall is available when you want it, without carrying an object.

Price and platforms

Brick is hardware you buy once, with its companion app. Catholic DeVice is free on iPhone and Android: the Praywall, two vice apps, Retreats, and all statistics cost nothing, with an optional premium tier for unlimited vice apps and recurring schedules.

The honest bottom line

If what you want is physical distance from the decision, Brick does that better than any app can, ours included. If you want the moment of temptation to be met with prayer rather than removed, that is what we built. Catholic DeVice is free on iPhone and Android.

More comparisons: vs Opal · vs one sec · vs ScreenZen · the full apps-that-block-until-you-pray comparison