Last updated April 4, 2025
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.
Alec, Peter, Julien, Konrad, Matt and Kenneth from Opal.
Opal is the largest app utilizing the Screen Time API, consistently ranking among the top 30 grossing productivity apps in the U.S. since its release in 2022, with over 5,000,000 installs and averaging 450,000 Daily Active Users. However, we are facing significant challenges with the API that have been reported to Apple. These include system freezing, slow data loading, frequent crashes, and interruptions to audio playback and notifications, all of which disrupt the user experience. Additionally, blocked websites during sessions can unintentionally block unrelated apps, and blocked apps do not return to their original positions on the springboard after unblocking. These issues are critical to address to enhance the reliability and usability of the Screen Time API for Opal and other developers.
Status: ⛔️ Ongoing - We updated the radar with iOS 18.4 beta 1 confirming it wasn't fixed. We can confirm the bug is still present on iOS 18.4 beta 4. This is #1 priority for us. 12% of users experience this crash within the first weeks of starting to use Opal (over 2,000,000 unique people have experienced it so far).
Radar: FB11400221 Open Date: 29 Aug 2022
Forum link: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/764457
Issue Description:
The FamilyActivityPicker is unreliable and systematically crashes for 12% of Opal Users. When users select apps to block the popup that lists all the apps (FamilyActivityPicker)crashes. When this popup crashes, the screen for the popup goes black but the popup can still be dismissed. You may also notice other issues like the keyboard appearing after tapping the search bar but anything you type does not appear in the textfield. This is usually happening when a category is containing a large number of apps and websites, or when you use Search to search for an app or website. We have analytics in place to detect this crash: 12% of users experience this crash within the first weeks of starting to use Opal (over 2,000,000 unique people have experienced it so far).
Workaround:
Opal FAQ | Opal is freezing or crashing when I select apps or websites
Status: ⛔️ Ongoing
Forum link: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/738262