My app sends screen time awareness notifications based on DeviceActivityMonitor thresholds. Often, users receive two notifications in a row for the same screen time threshold. This means that the app extension is triggering the same eventDidReachThreshold callback function twice for the same threshold. I've made sure that there is only one activity schedule being monitored. This happens often, but not every time (over 50% of the time). Anybody else experience this issue, and any way to mitigate it?

Hello, I have an app that you can select apps and then start monitoring. When I restrict the apps by button click, and monitor the activity, the scheduled time works and intervalDidEnd cancels shielding apps. But when I schedule shielding apps, intervalDidStart doesn't start shielding. What am I missing here? I have already added FamilyControls capability. import SwiftUI @main struct TestingScreenTimeAPIApp: App { @UIApplicationDelegateAdaptor(AppDelegate.self) var appDelegate var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { ContentView() } } } import SwiftUI struct ContentView: View { @StateObject var model = MyModel.shared @State var isPresented = false var body: some View { VStack { Button("Select Apps") { isPresented = true } .familyActivityPicker(isPresented: $isPresented, selection: $model.selectionToDiscourage) Button("Start monitoring") { model.startMonitoring() } .padding() } } } struct ContentView_Previews: PreviewProvider { static var previews: some View { ContentView() } } import Foundation import FamilyControls import DeviceActivity class MyModel: ObservableObject { static let shared = MyModel() private init() {} var selection: FamilyActivitySelection? = nil var selectionToDiscourage = FamilyActivitySelection() { willSet { selection = newValue } } func startMonitoring() { let intervalStart = DateComponents(hour: 11, minute: 09) let intervalEnd = DateComponents(hour: 13, minute: 14) let schedule = DeviceActivitySchedule( intervalStart: intervalStart, intervalEnd: intervalEnd, repeats: true) let center = DeviceActivityCenter() do { try center.startMonitoring(.activity, during: schedule) } catch { print ("Error: \(error)") } } } extension DeviceActivityName { static let activity = Self("activity") } import UIKit import FamilyControls class AppDelegate: NSObject, UIApplicationDelegate { func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey : Any]? = nil) -> Bool { Task { do { try await AuthorizationCenter.shared.requestAuthorization(for: .individual) } catch { print("Error: \(error.localizedDescription)") } } return true } } import DeviceActivity import FamilyControls import ManagedSettings class DeviceActivityMonitorExtension: DeviceActivityMonitor { let store = ManagedSettingsStore() override func intervalDidStart(for activity: DeviceActivityName) { super.intervalDidStart(for: activity) let model = MyModel.shared if model.selection != nil { let applications = model.selection!.applicationTokens store.shield.applications = applications.isEmpty ? nil : applications } } override func intervalDidEnd(for activity: DeviceActivityName) { super.intervalDidEnd(for: activity) store.shield.applications?.removeAll() } }

Hello Apple Developer Community, We're experiencing a critical issue with the Screen Time frameworks, and it's affecting one of our users severely. I'm hoping someone here can provide guidance or a potential solution. Details: Our app offers a feature using the ManagedSettings shield that lets users block all apps based on a set schedule. After the scheduled block ends, the apps are expected to become accessible again. In one case, a user reported that the apps did not unblock after the schedule ended. Upon trying to manually end the session from within our app, the app only displays a blank white screen. The user attempted to disable Screen Time access for our app via the iOS settings, but the apps remained blocked. Even after completely disabling Screen Time from the settings or restarting the phone, the apps stayed blocked. Interestingly, I attempted to replicate the issue on my end by toggling Screen Time settings and restarting, but everything worked as expected and I could not reproduce the problem. This issue, though seemingly isolated, has rendered a user's phone virtually unusable, and highlights a potential high-impact bug within the Screen Time framework. It feels necessary for there to be a "master off-switch" or a fail-safe mechanism in these scenarios. Any insights, solutions, or workarounds would be deeply appreciated. It's crucial for us to support our user and resolve this promptly. Thank you in advance!

I'm developing a mental wellness app, and I need to get user's screentime and app usage data and send it to my flask backend for analytics. Is it possible on iphone right now? I've looked into ScreenTime and DeviceActivity frameworks, but they're really poor in terms of examples and documentation, so I'm not sure if this is actually possible or not.

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 repeating schedules? For this specific feature, we don't need to eventDidReachThreshold callbacks, which is the main purpose of DeviceActivityMonitor. So we really don't need any Device Activity integration at all, just setting and disabling ManagedSettings shields at certain times. Would love if anyone could suggest and alternative to DeviceActivityMonitor.

I use App Groups to share UserDefaults data between my host app and DeviceActivityMonitor extension. On iOS 17, it appears that reading @AppStorage variables are causing my DeviceActivityMonitor extension callback functions to crash. Weirdly, writing values is okay. I see this in the extension logs: Couldn't read values in CFPrefsPlistSource<0x10fe251d0> (Domain: GROUP_NAME, User: kCFPreferencesAnyUser, ByHost: Yes, Container: (null), Contents Need Refresh: Yes): Using kCFPreferencesAnyUser with a container is only allowed for System Containers, detaching from cfprefsd However, through searching this log message on the internet and the fact that it also appears in my host app logs without crashing, this seems to be a warning - possibly indicating an issue but also a possible red herring. But the fact remains that when I don't read UserDefaults values or variables decorated with @AppStorage in the DeviceActivityMonitor extension, everything works fine. Are UserDefaults, and specifically @AppStorage decorators supported in the DeviceActivityMonitor extension?

Where is Screen Time history data stored on iOS 15.8 (iPhone 6s)?

Hey. Is there any app that shows a precise activity log? When I was using Android I had an app Quality Time which keeps the track of what are you doing minute by minute. It has a log which shows 13:24 PM Open Facebook, 13:45 Open Instagram etc. Is there any app on iPhone that tracks your activity like this and stores it into a log or something? I need an app like this or something similar Thank you.

Any way that I try requesting authorization for family controls is incredibly inconsistent. The line of code that hangs is **let center = AuthorizationCenter.shared ** I've looked at other posts and I saw someone recommended declaring let center = AuthorizationCenter.shared outside the main thread and somehow get the status on the main thread. I've tried that approach with no success. I've scoured GitHub to see how other people approach the request but it's all pretty similar. The following code sometimes works great for a few minutes and then I rebuild and run and it hangs on AuthorizationCenter.shared.requestAuthorization(for: FamilyControlsMember.individual). Would love any suggestions!!! .onAppear { Task { do { print("try requestAuthorization") try await AuthorizationCenter.shared.requestAuthorization(for: FamilyControlsMember.individual) print("requestAuthorization success") switch AuthorizationCenter.shared.authorizationStatus { case .notDetermined: print("not determined") case .denied: print("denied") case .approved: print("approved") @unknown default: break } } catch { print("Error requestAuthorization: ", error) } } }

Hello, I'm currently experiencing an issue with the DeviceActivityMonitor extension in my code, specifically with the eventDidReachThreshold callback. I'm hoping to get some insights into why this problem occurs and how to resolve it. Problem: Issue 1: The eventDidReachThreshold callback is not triggering as expected. It appears that the callback is not being invoked when the threshold is reached. Issue 2: After a few seconds, the eventDidReachThreshold callback starts to trigger multiple times. This unexpected behavior is causing problems in my code, as it results in incorrect actions being taken. Issue 3: There are instances where the eventDidReachThreshold callback provides an incorrect event name. iOS version: iOS16.7.2 and iOS17.1.1 Here is my code to start the monitoring: func startMonitoring() { var startTime : DateComponents = DateComponents(hour: 0, minute: 0) let endTime : DateComponents = DateComponents(hour: 23, minute: 59) /// Creates the schedule for the activity, specifying the start and end times, and setting it to repeat. let schedule = DeviceActivitySchedule(intervalStart: startTime, intervalEnd: endTime, repeats: true, warningTime: nil) /// Defines the event that should trigger the encouragement. let event = DeviceActivityEvent(applications: socialActivitySelection.applicationTokens, categories: socialActivitySelection.categoryTokens, webDomains: socialActivitySelection.webDomainTokens, threshold: DateComponents(minute: 2)) let events: [DeviceActivityEvent.Name: DeviceActivityEvent] = [.socialScreenTimeEvent : event] do { activityCenter.stopMonitoring([.socialScreenTime]) /// Tries to start monitoring the activity using the specified schedule and events. try activityCenter.startMonitoring(.socialScreenTime, during: schedule, events: events) } catch { /// Prints an error message if the activity could not be started. print("Could not start monitoring: \(error)") } } In addition, I should mention that, with each iteration through the eventDidReachThreshold callback, I increment the threshold by 2 minutes and restart the monitoring. If there are any known workarounds or potential solutions, please share them. Thank you.

Hello! I am a new developer and am attempting to use Apple's Device Activity API. However, I am struggling with the View of the Device Activity Report. For one, the view stretches to fill all available space instead of simply being the size of its content. Secondly, the background color seems fixed and I can't figure out how to remove it. The Screen Time API demo video shows this Device Activity API used with a clear background, so I know it is possible, I just can't figure out how to do it as it seems to be built into the Device Activity Report itself. Does anyone have any ideas? I'll attach a photo to show you what I mean. The black box is the Device Activity Report that I am trying to edit. Thank you for your help!

Hi Folks, How to sheild or lock the apps in childs phone from the Guardians Phone. I got the opaque tokens from childs phone , but on the parents device there are only categories options but not the applications. so how to get the applications in parentsl device . when i try to authorisee the family controls with .individual option there are not the applications in family activity picker but only the categories and others. Thanks in advance

Hi everyone, I've been spending my evenings on the app for around 6 months that's using Screen Time API introduced in WWDC 21 (https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10123/), I'm having many issues with this API and looking for anyone who has experience with this API, I will appreciate any help or advice I can get! I'm using DeviceActivityReport to display the dashboard with screen time usage and certain metrics. Device activity report extension runs in an isolated sandbox, which makes it harder to debug and can't make any network call or write to any storage, for privacy purposes which makes sense, but makes it very hard for development. The issue is that the process where DeviceActivityReport is running crashes for no reason frequently or doesn't run at all. The API itself has many bugs, which is backed up by my experience, Opal app developers and Screen Time even made the news with its bugs. I see the same behaviour with other apps like Opal, but they can workaround somehow it and reload the report. I'm experienced with UIKit but have little experience with SwiftUI, since ScreenTime API is using SwiftUI only I have to embed DeviceActivityReport in UIKit using UIHostingController and then inside of the device activity report extension target I'm using UIViewControllerRepresentable to embed UIKit into SwiftUI. But I've done some testing and the behaviour is the same when using pure SwiftUI, although there might be fewer hiccups, I couldn't rewrite the whole app. That's the gist, there's too much code to include, but I can drop more code snippets if there's anyone who has experience with this API who can help me.

Hey, I am experiencing this bug where I ask the device activity report for data within a date range, in daily segments. the device report receives the truncated date range: some date 23:00 -> some other date 23:00. however the async data list returns date ranges of the sort: 22:00 -> 22:00 (of the next day). and sometimes it returns 22:00 -> 23:00 (of the same day), but then the data contained in that range is still relative to tne entire day since the total screen time is greater than an hour. I think that the way date intervals are treated by the device activity report extension contains bugs and is not consistent. Is anyone experiencing similar bugs?

My app uses DeviceActivitySchedule to let users set schedules to block certain apps. I naturally want to understand how my users are using the feature, so I capture analytics events using Segment. Ever since the release of iOS 17.1, analytics events from DeviceActivityMonitor have stopped firing. I believe this is due to the fact that the app extension that DeviceActivityMonitor runs in does not support asynchronous network requests. (However, I'm not sure why the analytics were working correctly with iOS 16). What is the best way to capture analytics inside the DeviceActivityMonitor app extension in iOS 17?

Are there published limits for how many concurrent ManagedSettingsStore our apps can have going at once? More importantly, is there a way for our app to retrieve all the ManagedSettingStore.Name that are already applied by our app? (Not system wide, just our app). DeviceActivityCenter().activities fetches all the DeviceActivityName that are being monitored actively. Is there something similar?

I need to control and shield apps with a set period. For example, I need to set 20 minutes limit. And when I use the device more than 20 minutes in a row, than block all apps for some period (to have a rest for the eyes)

I'm encountering a problem with the DeviceActivityMonitor framework on iOS 17 that wasn't present in iOS 16. The app extension sends analytics events via the Segment SDK whenever the extension's functions are called. This setup worked flawlessly on iOS 16. However, since upgrading to iOS 17, it appears that the vast majority of my iOS 17 users are not triggering the expected analytics events. I'm aware that network requests in app extensions are not officially supported, yet somehow, Segment's SDK managed to function without issues in the previous OS version. Could there have been any changes in iOS 17 related to app extensions or the DeviceActivityMonitor framework that might be influencing this change in analytics behavior? Or perhaps there's a new restriction or modification in the app extension's network capabilities that I might be overlooking? Any insights into these changes or guidance on how to ensure analytics events are triggered reliably within the app extension on iOS 17 would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!

Hi, I'm having trouble understanding what is the correct DateComponents format for the DeviceActivityCenter.startMonitoring to work as expected. Here's how it behaves with my setup: The schedule interval is set for 15 minutes (the minimum). On intervalDidStart I set the shields shield.applicationCategories = .all(except: exclCat) shield.webDomainCategories = .all(except: exclWeb) On intervalDidEnd I clear the settings shield.applicationCategories = nil shield.webDomainCategories = nil Different behavior with different DeviceActivitySchedule intervals. In the below examples I'll refer to hour, minute and second components as time components, and the calendar, timeZone, year, month, day, hour, minute and second components as date and time components. Also, with all combinations below no errors are thrown when calling the startMonitoring method. A. ❌ The start interval has time components, while the end interval has date and time components: The intervalDidStart is not triggered. DeviceActivitySchedule(schedule: <USDeviceActivitySchedule: 0x28354a5e0> IntervalStart: <NSDateComponents: 0x2839c7f40> { Hour: 9 Minute: 24 Second: 55 IntervalEnd: <NSDateComponents: 0x2839c7f70> { Calendar: <CFCalendar 0x2818f9090 [0x1e4fb1d10]>{identifier = 'gregorian'} TimeZone: Asia/Manila (GMT+8) offset 28800 Calendar Year: 2023 Month: 5 Leap Month: 0 Day: 15 Hour: 9 Minute: 39 Second: 55 Repeats: 0 WarningTime: (null)) B. ❌ The start interval has date and time components, while the end interval has time components: Here, the opposite of the above example happens — the intervalDidStart is triggered, but the intervalDidEnd is not. C. ❌ Both intervals have time components: The intervalDidStart is not triggered. D. ✅ Only hour, minute, and second components for both start and end intervals: Callbacks are called as expected. DeviceActivitySchedule(schedule: <USDeviceActivitySchedule: 0x282e80450> IntervalStart: <NSDateComponents: 0x2822f39f0> { Hour: 9 Minute: 12 Second: 15 IntervalEnd: <NSDateComponents: 0x2822f3a00> { Hour: 9 Minute: 27 Second: 15 Repeats: 0 WarningTime: (null)) So it seems that the correct and working version is with the time components only. However, from the documentation, the maximum schedule interval is a week. So if I need to set the schedule starting from a certain time of day A and ending in a certain time of day B, what should the DateComponents look like? Thanks for you help!

When I try to add an extension to my Xcode project, I get the following warning: Activate “MyMonitor” scheme? This scheme has been created for the “(null)” target. Choose Activate to use this scheme for building and debugging. Schemes can be chosen in the toolbar or Product menu. I'm trying to understand a few things about this error: What exactly does the "(null)" target refer to? Could it be that Xcode is creating the scheme before the target is complete? Could this "(null)" target be the reason my code doesn't seem to be connecting properly to my app extension? How can I correct this issue? I ran into this during the process of trying to add a Device Activity Monitor Extension to my iOS project. Any hints are welcome, I have been stuck on this for too long.