How to Block Gambling Sites and Track Your Recovery in One App

If you are trying to stop gambling, a blocker is a sensible first layer. It can turn an impulse into a pause by making a site or app harder to reach. But blocking answers only one question: can I access gambling right now?

Recovery raises different questions. When do my urges show up? What tends to trigger them? How many gambling-free days have I protected? How much money have I not put back into betting? What actually helps when the urge arrives?

That is why the strongest setup is usually layered: reduce access, use self-exclusion where it is available, track what is happening, and have a simple response ready for the moment an urge appears.

Step 1: Put friction between you and gambling

Start with the places you actually use: betting sites, casino apps, poker, lottery, crypto casinos, prediction markets or anything else that has become part of the same cycle for you.

On iPhone, Apple Screen Time can restrict specific websites and can also restrict App Store purchases and redownloads. Apple currently places these controls under Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions, but menu names can change with iOS updates, so use Apple’s current support page when setting it up.

On Android, the exact blocking method depends on the tool you use. Still uses device-level blocking features to help restrict gambling apps and websites, and it also lets you add sites that matter specifically to you.

The goal is not to create a perfect, impossible-to-bypass wall. The goal is to make acting on a fast urge slower, less automatic and easier to interrupt.

Step 2: Add self-exclusion where it is available

A device blocker and self-exclusion are not the same thing. A blocker works on your device. A self-exclusion scheme works with gambling operators or regulators, so it can still apply when you change devices or try to use another browser.

For example, GAMSTOP says that people registered with its service are blocked from using online gambling companies licensed in Great Britain during their chosen exclusion period. Other countries use different systems, and the coverage is not identical everywhere.

Use both when you can. One reduces access from your side; the other can close licensed gambling accounts from the operator side.

Step 3: Track the things a blocker cannot see

Tracking is not about turning recovery into a scoreboard. It is about making patterns visible instead of relying on memory from the middle of a difficult week.

• Gambling-free days. A visible timeline can make progress easier to recognise, especially when a bad evening makes it feel as if nothing has changed.
• Money protected. If you choose to track an estimate, it can turn “I did not gamble” into something more concrete: money that stayed with you instead.
• Urges. Logging that an urge happened — and that you got through it — gives you a record that an urge does not automatically have to become a bet.
• Triggers. Stress, boredom, payday, sport, loneliness and late-night phone use can look random until you write them down repeatedly.
• Mood and context. Recovery is easier to plan around when you know what tends to happen before the urge, not only after it.

Still puts those pieces together so your blocker is not operating in isolation: the same app can hold your clean-day progress, money-protected estimate, urge history, trigger log and recovery tools.

Step 4: Decide what you will do when the urge still arrives

No blocker removes the feeling that made you want to gamble. Gambling Therapy recommends preparing for urges in advance, talking to someone, distracting yourself for a while, and looking at what triggered the urge. Those are useful because they give you something specific to do instead of leaving a blank space after access is blocked.

A simple plan can be:

1. Delay the decision. You do not need to decide anything about gambling while the urge is at its loudest.
2. Name what is happening. Stress? Boredom? A loss you want back? A match? Payday? Say it plainly.
3. Move your attention. Walk, call someone, do a short puzzle, shower, make food, leave the room — anything that breaks the automatic sequence.
4. Read your own reason for stopping. Not a generic quote. Your reason, written when you were thinking clearly.
5. Log the urge afterwards. The point is not perfection. The point is learning your pattern.

Still’s urge tools are built around this gap between “I want to gamble” and “I acted on it.” Blocking helps create the gap. The recovery tools give you something to do inside it.

A stronger setup than “just install a blocker”

Think in layers:

You do not have to use Still to build that setup. You can combine a dedicated blocker, your country’s self-exclusion system, a notebook and support from someone you trust. Still exists to put several of those pieces in one place.

If you are comparing blockers, read Still vs Gamban. If money is the part that feels impossible right now, our guide to rebuilding after gambling debt is a better next read.