Last updated August 3, 2023

TLDR: if you have a personal relationship with engineers at Apple and enjoy Opal, we’d love to connect with them on this of issues we are facing with Screen Time API and why they matter.

Summary

We're currently experiencing various issues when using the Screen Time API with Opal, which we've reported to Apple. These include system freezing, slow loading times, crashes, and interruptions of audio and notifications. Additionally, some websites that are blocked in sessions may also block unrelated apps. Lastly, blocked apps do not return to their original location on the user's springboard after unblocking.

We are great fans of Apple, and we are truly grateful that the Apple engineering team built and made available Screen Time API. This API powers the Opal app and many other great apps, all with the ultimate goal of helping billions of people focus better. In the spirit of collaboration to make the API better for everyone to use, and to make Opal better for our community, we have compiled a list of issues we have encountered and already reported to Apple. If you have a personal relationship with engineers at Apple and enjoy Opal, we’d love to connect with them on this of issues we are facing with Screen Time API and why they matter.

Alec, Peter, Matt and Kenneth from Opal.

System freeze when accessing Screentime API

Status: ⛔️ Ongoing

Radar: FB11833456 Open Date : 29 Nov 2022

Issue description:

We’ve found that this issue can happen at any time. We’ve been able to reproduce it occasionally by reinstalling Opal while blocking is active. We’ve also been able to reproduce this issue on other Screentime apps.

The symptom of this is that blocking well get stuck or will not work at all, this is because Opal is unable to speak to the Screentime API and the AuthorizationCenter.

We try to detect this in Opal and if you’ve ever seen a ⚠️ emoji or “potential issue detected” - this is probably why.

If you have an active Opal session running, you should see a warning message in the session with troubleshooting steps.

Workaround:

• This issue sometimes resolves itself, other times this issue will persist across reinstalls
• We recommend trying these steps which may help
• If all of this doesn’t help:
  • Keep Opal open but in the background
  • Download a different Screentime app
  • Go through their app until you give Screentime permissions (this may take some time)
  • Once approved, re-open Opal

<aside> 📱 Specifically AuthorizationCenter will lock up the whole app if there is an attempt to access it

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