Hi Opal team,
In this topic, I’d like to talk about a few issues I’ve been experiencing with Opal, as well as some features I’d really love to see:
• I’m an iPhone user and I’m having a big tracking issue. (If you’re reading this and you’re also an iPhone user with the same problem, please reply or like this topic!) When my phone battery dies while I’m scrolling through a distracting app like Instagram, Opal continues to count screen time as if the app were still actively open. I know this bug is originally from iOS when the phone dies, but the previous version of Opal was smart enough to filter out and ignore those extra hours. With the major update, it seems you removed that check, and now Opal just accepts iOS’s bugged data and aggregates those extra hours into my total screen time, completely skewing my stats.
• App categorization issues & lack of manual control: Some apps are categorized by Opal as distracting when they aren’t, while others aren’t tagged as distracting when they actually are (for example, certain games I play). This messes up the distracting screen time stats when clicking on Focus. Please bring back the option to manually decide whether an app is distracting or productive.
• Feature Request – Lifetime Average for distracting apps: I would love to see a lifetime and monthly average screen time calculated only for distracting apps. This would make it much easier to track actual progress and see improvements over time.
Final thoughts: To be honest, I didn’t really like this major update. What made Opal unique compared to other focus apps was precisely these detail-oriented features and others. Right now, for me the app feels like it’s only useful for blocking apps—and at that point, what’s stopping us from switching to a much cheaper alternative to block apps while relying on iOS’s built-in Screen Time for analytics?
I really hope the team considers this feedback!