How to set up a manual “PTO mode” with iOS Focus + Shortcuts

You don’t strictly need an app to stop checking work on vacation. iOS ships with two tools — Focus and Screen Time — that, wired together with a Shortcuts automation, get you most of the way to a manual “PTO mode.” Here’s the honest, complete setup. It works. It’s also fiddly enough that you’ll see exactly why we built the app.

First, a quick reality check on the problem. Most vacation work-checking isn’t urgent and isn’t even a decision — it’s a loop. You feel a flicker of anxiety, your thumb finds the Slack icon before your brain catches up, and thirty seconds later you’re thinking about Q3 on a beach. The fix isn’t more willpower; it’s removing the icon from where your thumb expects it and putting a small wall in the way when you go looking. That’s exactly what the steps below do, using only what’s already on your phone.

What you’ll need

An iPhone on a recent version of iOS, ten quiet minutes, and the list of work apps you keep reflexively opening — Slack, Teams, Outlook, Gmail, Salesforce, whatever yours are. A willing partner or friend helps for one step (they’ll hold a passcode so you can’t instantly undo your own good intentions).

Step 1 — Create a “PTO” Focus

Open Settings → Focus, tap the + in the top corner, and choose Custom. Name it PTO, pick a calm colour and an icon (a beach umbrella is on the nose, but you’ll thank yourself later). This Focus becomes the switch you flip when a trip starts.

Step 2 — Decide who still gets through

A vacation isn’t a bunker. In the PTO Focus, under People, choose Allow Notifications From and add the handful who genuinely matter — partner, kids, a parent. Everyone else is silenced. Under Apps, set it to Silence Notifications From your work apps so no Slack badge can bait you.

Here’s the first limit worth knowing: Focus silences notifications, it doesn’t block opening an app. If you tap Slack, Slack still opens. Silencing kills the pull of the badge; the next step handles the habit of opening it anyway.

Step 3 — Hide the work apps from your Home Screen

Still inside the PTO Focus, scroll to Home Screen and turn on Custom Pages. Beforehand, park your work apps together on a single Home Screen page; then in the Focus settings, show only the pages that don’t contain work. When PTO is on, the work page simply isn’t there. Out of sight really does help — most “checking” is muscle memory, and muscle memory needs the icon to be where it always is.

Step 4 — Add a real wall with Screen Time

Silencing and hiding reduce temptation, but a determined thumb can still search for Slack and open it. To add genuine friction, go to Settings → Screen Time → App Limits, add a limit for your work apps, and set it to 1 minute a day. Once that minute’s gone, opening the app shows a “Time Limit” wall.

Now the key move: turn on Screen Time → Lock Screen Time Settings and set a passcode — then have your partner enter it so you don’t know it. Without that, “Ignore Limit → 15 More Minutes” is one tap away and the whole thing is theatre. With it, the wall actually holds.

Step 5 — Automate the on/off with Shortcuts

You don’t want to remember to flip the Focus at 6pm on your last day in the office. Open the Shortcuts app → Automation → + → Time of Day. Set it for the evening your trip begins, choose Run Immediately, and add the action Turn PTO Focus On. Create a second automation for your return morning that turns it Off.

This is where iOS fights you a little. Personal Automations trigger on a time of day, not a date range. There’s no native “block these apps from June 10 to June 17.” You’re really setting two one-off alarms per trip and deleting them afterwards — or leaving a daily automation running and toggling it by hand. It works; it’s just manual, every single trip.

Step 6 — Test it before you leave

Turn the PTO Focus on from Control Center. Confirm three things: your work Home Screen page is gone, work notifications are silent, and opening a work app hits the Screen Time wall. If any of those fail, revisit the step above it. Better to find the gap now than on day two of the trip.

Why the wall matters more than the hiding

It’s tempting to stop after hiding the apps and silencing notifications — it feels like enough. For a lot of people it isn’t, and it’s worth understanding why before you skip Step 4. Hiding removes the cue, but the habit still has a craving behind it, and a craving will happily spend ten seconds in Spotlight searching for “Slack.” The Screen Time wall is the piece that meets the craving with a small, boring obstacle at the exact moment of weakness. That pause — one tap, a “Time Limit” screen, a locked passcode you don’t hold — is usually all it takes for the rational part of your brain to catch up and go “actually, I’m on holiday.” Speed bumps beat fences here: you’re not trying to make work impossible, just slightly more effort than it’s worth in the moment.

The honest limitations

• No true date ranges. You approximate a trip with time-of-day automations and remove them afterwards.
• Bypass is one passcode away. The Screen Time lock only holds if someone else keeps the code.
• It’s per-device. Your iPad and Mac each need their own setup.
• Notifications leak. Email arriving via the built-in Mail app, or a colleague texting “did you see my message,” slip past app-specific silencing.
• Limits reset at midnight. Your 1-minute allowance comes back every day, so a late-night lapse is always technically possible.
• You redo it every trip. Different dates, sometimes different apps — the setup is never quite “set and forget.”

None of this makes the manual method useless. If you follow all six steps, you’ll genuinely check work less on your next vacation, for free, today. That’s a real win and you should take it.

Or let an app do the fiddly part

PTO Mode was built because we kept doing exactly this dance — six settings screens, a borrowed passcode, two automations to delete when we got home — and thought there should be a version that just knows “I’m off June 10–17.” Tell it your dates once and it arms itself, shows a calm shield instead of your work apps, keeps a couple of real emergency passes on hand, disarms when you’re back, and handles time zones so travel doesn’t break it. Three taps, no borrowed passcode, no per-trip teardown.

If the manual setup got you thinking “there has to be an easier way” — there is, and it’s coming.