Tabaa Adults or Ever Accountable?

Two philosophies: report after the fact, or prevent before it

Ever Accountable is built on a simple and clever idea: you will not browse porn if someone you respect is going to find out. The app sends reports on your activity to an accountability partner, and healthy shame does the rest. Technical blocking is not what that model is for, and that is a design choice, not a flaw. Tabaa Adults starts from the other end: the device itself does not open pornography, and nobody but you knows. On top of that block you shut out whatever you choose, for a term you set, and it does not lift early.

The practical difference is that accountability assumes you can still resist once you know somebody will see. The real moment of weakness does not wait for the weekly report.

Where Ever Accountable genuinely wins

• Tabaa does not run on iOS, macOS or ChromeOS at all. If your device is an iPhone, this comparison is settled against us in the first line.
• The accountability model itself is mature: the reports are written to be read by a human being and to open a conversation, not to be a technical log.
• You install it straight from the store, on the phone alone, while installing Tabaa takes a Windows computer and a cable. No factory reset on our side either - but the store is quicker.
• It suits the mutual-support-group culture it grew out of, where shared accountability matters more than hard blocking.

The comparison table

Where Tabaa wins: blocking at the device level, not the account level

Tabaa is installed with the Device Owner privilege, Android's official device-management mechanism. A disallowed app is not watched until it can be closed; it is suspended by the operating system itself. The result is that the blocking holds under any alternative launcher, with any SIM, on Wi-Fi and on mobile data alike, and whether or not anyone is signed in to a Google account.

• There is no hidden space that escapes the policy: adding a new user and switching between users are both blocked, second space and the work profile are locked by default, and on Android 15 and newer cloned apps and private space are locked as well.
• Accounts are not part of the equation: Tabaa places no restriction whatsoever on Google accounts. Sign in with as many as you like; protection is bound to the device rather than to an account, and adding or switching an account changes nothing about it.
• It cannot be switched off from inside the phone: the system removes the Force stop and Clear data buttons from the app's page, and the blocking returns after a reboot and after the system kills the app. And there is no removal button on the phone: protection is lifted through support after your account is verified.
• Speed you notice: a blocked app closes in about a third of a second, any change the supervisor makes reaches the phone in about three seconds, and instantly when the push message arrives from the server. If the app happens to be open at the moment it is blocked, it closes at that same moment.
• Updates are silent and self-installed: an improvement to the protection reaches every device without anyone doing anything and without going through an app store.

The filtering reaches inside the apps themselves

Tabaa pins encrypted Private DNS at operating-system level, points it at its own filtering server, and then locks the setting so it cannot be changed. Every DNS query on the device goes through it: the browser, the WebView embedded in a game or a chat app, and apps running in the background. No app has to integrate with Tabaa for its content to be filtered. Underneath that, 47 VPN, Tor, proxy and DNS-changer packages are blocked in every mode, and suspended even when they were already installed on the device.

And we will tell you the whole truth: DNS filtering needs Android 9 or newer, and an app carrying its own DNS resolver inside it may route around the filter. That is exactly why the 47-package list and the lock on the VPN setting sit underneath it. Read why DNS filtering alone is not enough to see where each layer stops.

Why Tabaa does not ask for the Accessibility permission

The ordinary Android blocker runs on an AccessibilityService: a permission that lets an app read everything on your screen so it can work out what you have opened. Tabaa declares no such service at all, declares no notification-listener service, installs no VPN on the phone, and asks for no camera, no microphone, no SMS, no contacts and no photos or files.

That has a practical consequence which matters to Egyptian users in particular. Some banking and payment apps restrict how they work, or refuse to run, when another app on the phone holds the Accessibility permission, because it is the same permission banking-fraud malware abuses. InstaPay and the National Bank of Egypt app have both published release notes describing a change in how the app behaves on devices where "advanced system permissions" have been granted. Tabaa never asks for that permission, so there is nothing on your phone for the bank app to object to.

And we will not exaggerate in the other direction: Tabaa runs on Device Owner, the highest privilege Android grants an app, and it needs the Usage Access permission, which a human grants by hand. The difference is not the size of the permission but its kind: a device-management policy, not reading your screen.

The modes are yours, the commitment locks them

A phone running Tabaa Adults is not one single state. Three modes above normal, in a fixed order of priority: strict focus beats sleep, and sleep beats study.

• Sleep and study are time windows in which only what you picked for that window will open.
• Strict focus is a full-screen countdown for a set length of time during which nothing opens at all, not even calls. The system pins it in kiosk lock, it survives a reboot, and it needs no internet because its end time is stored on the device.
• The clock itself is secured: the window is measured by the phone's clock, and that clock is pinned automatically to network time whenever any mode is active, so moving the clock forward does not jump over a window.

And you switch the modes on from your own phone. Mark a mode mandatory and you cannot cancel it before it ends. That is the point: the key is not in somebody else's hand, it is in the hand of the commitment you made to yourself, and that is what makes a mode work in the moment of weakness.

Who sees what you browse?

Nobody. Tabaa Adults has no supervisor, no reports and no location on a map, and Tabaa Desktop is the same. The deterrent is the block itself: the pornography block cannot be lifted from the phone, and what you shut out under a mandatory commitment you cannot undo in a moment of weakness.

In Arabic, and in Egyptian pounds

Tabaa Adults is all in Arabic, and WhatsApp support is answered by a human being in Arabic on +201507966165. The subscription is in pounds, monthly or yearly, for one phone after a seven-day free trial, and Tabaa Desktop has a subscription of its own. The details are on the pricing page.

And when a subscription expires: three days of grace in which nothing changes. After that Tabaa Adults shows a screen with two buttons, renew and remove the protection, and calls, SMS and WhatsApp keep working. In Tabaa Desktop the blocking stops being applied and nothing is deleted: your lists stay saved and come back when you renew, the program stays installed, and removing it takes the password you set.

Can you combine both models?

Yes, in Tabaa Children: the prevention comes from the operating system, and a parent reads the reports in the supervisor app, or the Tabaa team does through the "make us the supervisor" service. Tabaa Adults has no supervisor on purpose: it blocks pornography on your own device, and nobody gets a report. If you want a partner who knows what you browsed, that is Ever Accountable's real strength. Start from the Tabaa Adults page, and if the phone is your child's, from the Tabaa Children page. And take a look at the full comparison of blocking apps if you want to see the whole market in one table.