Hard Mode makes a block you can't quietly undo five minutes later. That's the point of it — and it's why there's a deliberate, limited way out.
What it actually locks
While Hard Mode is active, depending on which switches you turned on:
- The rule can't be edited or deleted.
- Tethered itself can't be deleted from your phone.
- Your device passcode can't be changed.
- The date and time stay automatic — so winding the clock forward doesn't end a block early.
Those last three are enforced by iOS, not by Tethered, so they hold even if you force-quit the app.
When it lets go
You choose this when you set the rule up. Hard Mode can hold:
- for as long as the block is running,
- for a fixed stretch of time,
- between two times of day,
- or all the time except during an unlock window you pick.
That last one is worth understanding before you use it: outside the window you chose, there is no ordinary way to change the rule.
The emergency break
Two per rolling seven days, 15 minutes each, and it lifts every Hard Mode block at once — not just the one in your way.
It's a rolling seven days rather than a weekly reset, so the pair doesn't refill all at once on a Sunday night. Each use comes back on its own seventh day: spend both on Monday and both return next Monday.
Turning it off for good
- Wait for the rule's unlock window, or use an emergency break.
- Open the rule and switch Hard Mode off.
- The iOS-level locks — app deletion, passcode, automatic time — clear as soon as no Hard Mode rule or session is active.
Removing Tethered entirely is a different job, and the order matters — see removing Tethered.