Opal: Screen Time for Focus 4+

This app works better than any other app blocker on iOS. Case and point, when I deleted the app after the free trial expired, I was on my phone until 5am!
It works by making you become more intentional with your phone usage. What I love most is that it changes the way you interact with your phone. The intentionally you set includes not only what you want to do but the amount of time you think you need. Then, it automatically turns back on so you’ll never use your phone more than you need to. That was my problem; I was using my phone without intention and without a way to stop once I started.
Despite this, I could not justify the cost of the app. Before the free plan, it was not worth it since I am a student and have negative income. Thank you to the team at Opal for making the app more accessible with the new free plan. It doesn’t have any of the extra bell and whistles that the paid plan has but it’s enough to stop my phone addiction. 10/10 would recommend.

Hey KaXoTiC! Thank you so much for leaving us a review, we are so happy to hear that Opal has helped you improve your digital wellbeing! 🙂 Please feel free to reach out to us at any time on our Discord server at https://opal.pm/discord ! - Team Opal 💎

I used to have a Pro account for this app and found it really useful before the last major update. I liked that you could configure it in a way where it would ask you what your intention was if you wanted to unblock apps for a certain amount of time. It helped me be mindful about what I was doing. They got rid of that feature now, which was a huge bummer for me but not a dealbreaker.

I understand that in the last major update they went from a VPN to using Screen Time, which made it easier for them to block the apps themselves, and not just the data. This is helpful. However, it seems like a huge oversight on their behalf that now I’m somehow still able to access social media websites on my web browser. So when Opal blocks my Instagram app, I can still go on my safari and access Instagram in no time. I reached out to their customer support for a solution. Apparently you can’t block specific websites, only the ones your screen time deems as “most visited” ones. There’s no way around this other than blocking every single website on your phone and then just manually adding the ones you wanna visit which is unrealistic, as I oftentimes work from my phone and I don’t know exactly which sites I need to go on. So this app virtually doesn’t work anymore. I can still go on Facebook or Instagram or any of those sites through my browser. It’s useless. Unfortunately I can’t get past this and I’ll have to find another app to help me block social media

Hi Gem, thanks for your review, we are sorry to read Opal did not work as intended for you..We have the whitelist feature that will block all apps and websites, except the ones you select. Happy to help with this if you decide to come back!
Team Opal💎

Overall, I love Opal! It’s really helping me stay on task during my assignments, and I think that the UI is absolutely gorgeous. This is really smart! One thing I wish the app did was disconnect the VPN when it’s not actively blocking apps and only connect to it when Opal is turned on, it’s a little bit of a privacy concern having the VPN connected when it’s not doing anything. It would be much better for privacy if the VPN was only connected when Opal is on, instead of having to scroll down to the bottom of the settings page to disconnect the VPN. At the very least, move the disconnect VPN button to somewhere more accessible (the main home screen would be best). I get that it’s necessary for the scheduling to work, but maybe instead there could simply be a pop-up warning the user that disabling the VPN will turn off scheduling (if there’s any enabled schedules) when you hit the disconnect button, instead of hiding it away. he amount of features you can use with the free tier is really great, too! They don’t force you to upgrade to the Pro plan to use the app, all the main functionalities are available for free and the other paid ones (like Scheduling and Focus Timer) let you try them out to see how it works.

Hey there! Thank you for the review, we're so grateful to have you on Opal! 🙂 The primary reasons the VPN remains on even while you are not using Opal is because it allows you to start and stop sessions quickly, and to utilize scheduled sessions as you mentioned. 😊 If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at any time! – Team Opal 💎

EDIT: we no longer have a VPN! (no privacy concern). We now use Screen Time API.