“DeviceActivityMonitor”

I’m building an iOS app that uses FamilyControls + ManagedSettings + DeviceActivity. Goal: temporarily “unlock” a shielded app for N minutes, then automatically re-apply the shield when the timer expires. What I do: In the main app, when user picks an expiry (e.g. 15 min, 30 min). I start a non-repeating DeviceActivity schedule and remove the app’s ApplicationToken from ManagedSettingsStore().shield.applications. I also store activeUnlockBundleID etc. in an App Group so the DeviceActivityMonitor extension can re-lock at the end. Expected: DeviceActivityMonitor.intervalDidEnd(for:) is invoked when the non-repeating interval ends, and I re-add the token to the shield set. Actual: The app does not re-lock when the interval expires. I added OS logs as well as “debug local notifications” from the DeviceActivityMonitor extension in: init() intervalDidStart intervalDidEnd eventDidReachThreshold None of these logs or notifications ever appear, which suggests the extension is never invoked (or cannot

I'm wondering if we able to send Local Push Notifications from DeviceActivityMonitor extension... If we have to use AppGroups to pass info between an app and the extension, could we post notification though UNNotificationRequest? I also tried to push data through NotificationCenter, also doesn’t work. Can we do so, or did something wrong? Should these cases that I described above work from iOS 16 and above or not? Thank you!

Hello Apple development team, I have developed an App for screen time management, which mainly uses ScreenTimeAPI. Users can set certain Apps to be disabled during a certain period of time. After the App is released, users often report that the settings do not take effect as expected. I have seen many developers on the forum reporting that the DeviceActivityMonitor extension sometimes does not trigger callbacks. Based on this background, I have the following questions: Is it a known problem that the DeviceActivityMonitor extension sometimes does not trigger callbacks? If so, are there any means to avoid or reduce the probability of occurrence? In addition to being killed by the system when the running memory exceeds (I just called some ScreenTimeAPI and accessed UserDefaults in the extension, which should not exceed the running memory), under what other circumstances will the DeviceActivityMonitor extension be killed by the system? Will it automatically recover after being killed? W

Our app uses a 24-hour DeviceActivityMonitor repeating schedule to send users notifications for every hour of screen time they spend on their phone per day. Notifications are sent from eventDidReachThreshold callbacks at 1, 2, 3, etc, hour thresholds to keep them aware of their screen time. We have recently received an influx of emails from our users that after updating to iOS 17.6.1 their DeviceActivityMonitor notifications are saying their screen time was much higher than what is shown in DeviceActivityReport and their device's Screen Time settings. These users have disabled Share Across Devices - but I suspect the DeviceActivityMonitor is still getting screen time from their other devices even though that setting is turned off. Has anybody else noticed this, understands what is causing this, or could recommend a fix that we can tell our users to do?

It seems like private browsing is undetectable with DeviceActivityMonitor for two reasons: Specific web domains do not cause the monitoring threshold callback functions to fire, due to the privacy setting Safari is not able to be monitored as an app or a category. It doesn't appear in the FamilyActivityPicker, and it doesn't appear to belong to any Screen Time category when viewing Safari's information in Screen Time Settings Is there any way to monitor device activity during private browsing? If not, that seems like a big problem for apps that allow parents to set device activity limits for their kids.

I am currently debugging an issue with DeviceActivityMonitor where the threshold is reached even though the target app (e.g. Instagram) is not being used actively. I noticed that the device with the unexpected behavior had the instagram.com website opened in the Safari web browser (among hundreds of other tabs). That tab was not actively used either (not in foreground, Safari app neither used). However, I was wondering if it can happen that this website is contributing towards the threshold as well even though it is in background and not used? Otherwise I cannot explain myself this strange behavior.

I added the extension via targets. And I added code in the intervalDidStart() override to print and send a notification. But it never seems to run. Am I supposed to do any other steps after adding the extension? // Make sure that your class name matches the NSExtensionPrincipalClass in your Info.plist. class DeviceActivityMonitorExtension: DeviceActivityMonitor { func getSelectionFromUserDefaults() -> FamilyActivitySelection { let defaults = UserDefaults.standard if let encodedData = defaults.data(forKey: ScreenTimeSelection) { let decoder = PropertyListDecoder() if let selection = try? decoder.decode(FamilyActivitySelection.self, from: encodedData) { return selection } } return FamilyActivitySelection() } override func intervalDidStart(for activity: DeviceActivityName) { super.intervalDidStart(for: activity) print(HERE!) let content = UNMutableNotificationContent() content.title = Feed the cat content.subtitle = It looks hungry content.sound = UNNotificationSound.default // show this notification

At 11:37 in this video - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10123/ - Nolan instantiates MyModel() in swiftui view file. And then at 12:02 he just uses MyModel from extension. I have the exact same code and when I try to build my project, it fails with error that MyModel() could not be found. I shared my MyModel.swift file between extension target and main app. Now it builds. However, it seems there are two separate instances of MyModel. What is proper way for DeviceActivityMonitor extension to pass data to main app? I simply want to increment counter from extension every minute and let the main app to know that. Or even better, - is there a way to use SwiftData from Device Activity Monitor extension?

I understand that the DeviceActivityMonitor extension is designed to be very lightweight, and the system terminates the extension as soon as its callback functions return. However, I want to save values to UserDefaults inside the extension's callback functions. This creates concurrency issues for my app because the documentation for UserDefaults states that When you set a default value, it’s changed synchronously within your process, and asynchronously to persistent storage and other processes. In order to guarantee that these values are persisted before the extension terminates my app, I want to call UserDefaults.synchronize(), but its documentations states that it's unnecessary and shouldn't be used. Furthermore, it's listed under Legacy but not marked deprecated. Is synchronize() the recommended way to solve my concurrency problem? Or could there be a better way to wait for storage synchronization before returning from a synchronous function?

I am developing a project with the Screen Time API, and I cannot understand why the methods inside DeviceActivityMonitor extension are not being called. Some points to note: I do start by requesting authorization from the User (this is working as expected when opening the app) Both the DeviceActivityMonitor Extension and the main app are under the same App Group I have added Family Controls capability to both targets and have the developer account to use it. I start by calling center.startMonitoring() I have overridden the original methods. Yet, when startMonitoring is called, there is no action that is supposed to be taken that is being taken, and as far as I can tell, the methods aren't even being called. Here are some relevant snippets of code: // EXT class DeviceActivityMonitorExtension: DeviceActivityMonitor { override func intervalDidStart(for activity: DeviceActivityName) { super.intervalDidStart(for: activity) let store = ManagedSettingsStore(named: .daily) } override func i

Dear Screen Time Team! The current 6 MB memory limit for the DeviceActivityMonitor extension no longer reflects the reality of modern iOS devices or the complexity of apps built on top of the Screen Time framework. When Screen Time APIs were introduced with iOS 15, hardware constraints were very different. Since then, iPhone performance and available RAM have increased significantly…but the extension memory limit has remained unchanged. My name is Frederik Riedel, and I’m the developer of the screen time app “one sec.” Our app relies heavily on FamilyControls, ManagedSettings, and DeviceActivity to provide real-time interventions that help users reduce social media usage. In practice, the 6 MB limit has become a critical bottleneck: The DeviceActivityMonitor extension frequently crashes due to memory pressure, often unpredictably. Even highly optimized implementations struggle to stay within this constraint when using Swift and multiple ManagedSettings stores. The limit makes it disproportio

The listening callbacks were not triggered for intervalDidStart and intervalDidEnd after successfully starting center.startMonitoring when I attempted to set a schedule with DeviceActivitySchedule at 20-minute intervals Is there anyone who can assist me? Thank you. Below you will find my code. let intervalLengthInSeconds = 20 * 60 let intervalEnd = Date(timeIntervalSinceNow: TimeInterval(intervalLengthInSeconds)) let intervalStart = Date() let schedule = DeviceActivitySchedule(intervalStart: Calendar.current.dateComponents([.hour, .minute], from: intervalStart), intervalEnd: Calendar.current.dateComponents([.hour, .minute], from: intervalEnd), repeats: false, warningTime: DateComponents(minute: 1)) let newActivity = DeviceActivityName(rawValue: 20minuteUse) Log(😯 (String(describing: schedule.nextInterval))) do { try center.startMonitoring(newActivity, during: schedule) } catch { print(failed to start session: (error.localizedDescription)) } class MyMonitorExtension: DeviceActivityMonitor { let store

Dear Developer Technical Support, I wanted to ask for technical advice regarding the DeviceActivityMonitor which is part of the DeviceActivity framework: The DeviceActivityMonitor has a very strict memory limit of 6MB. That’s not a lot and it doesn't leave a lot of room for any kind of code that accesses permanently stored data. I would therefore like to ask for advice on best-practices on how to share information between the main app and that extension: Is UserDefaults a good idea to use here? Can/should we use CoreData or SwiftData? Should we build super small file-based data sharing (e.g. via .plists)? Why is it necessary to share data? This can be simple things that inform the decision of the device activity monitor in intervalDidStart, intervalDidEnd, eventDidReachThreshold, eventWillReachThresholdWarning. For example a setting where the user decides if they want to receive a push notification on eventWillReachThresholdWarning. Or the list of tokens that is supposed to be blocked in eve

I did a lot of researches, but cannot understand why methods inside DeviceActivityMonitor extension are not calling. What I've seen related to this question and already checked: Do you starting monitoring for schedules? Yes, I do by calling center.startMonitoring() as it has been explained on WWDC2021-10123. I was searching an issue while creating the extension. Walk through steps that are described here. Everything looks good for me. Did you add Family Control Capability to extension's target? Yes, I did. Is your device authorized with FamilyControls? Yes. The only doubt I have here that I'm authorising FamilyControls for .individual . But as I've asked previously, it shouldn’t be a reason. Task { do { guard #available(iOS 16.0, *) else { // Fallback on earlier versions return } try await AuthorizationCenter.shared.requestAuthorization(for: .individual) switch AuthorizationCenter.shared.authorizationStatus { case .notDetermined: print(not determined) case .denied: print(denied) case .approved: print

We have an app that uses the Screen Time APIs to block certain apps set by the user on a schedule: We use ManagedSettings to shield selected apps We use DeviceActivityMonitor to shield the apps automatically on a schedule set by the user. The shielding starts during the intervalDidStart callback function and ends during the intervalDidEnd callback function We are getting reports from the majority of our iOS 17 users that the app blocking schedules no longer work on iOS 17. We have tested this on our own iOS 17 devices and reproduced the behavior. But the feature still works consistently on iOS 16 devices. The app is still built using Xcode 14 instead of Xcode 15 due to another issue - the DeviceActivityReport is blank for all iOS 16 users when built in Xcode 15 (link to issue on the developer forums: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/735915). When testing with Xcode 15 builds, the bug appears to improve - however it still occurs intermittently. Are there any other mechanisms to run tasks on r