Hello,
I am the developer of an app called one sec which helps users to spend less time on social media: https://one-sec.app
Therefore, we make heavy use of the Screen Time API, and thus ManagedSettings and ShieldActionDelegate.
One feature of one sec is the so-called “Doom Scroll Emergency Brake”.
This blocks a target app after a certain usage threshold (e.g. 5 minutes) and requires going through an intervention (e.g. breathing exercise) to unlock more time.
That added friction makes it very effective in reducing time spent on apps.
One thing that is confusing for our users is the way they are prompted to unlock more time, if they want to.
They have to:
- Have Push Notifications enabled for one sec
- Exempt one sec’s notifications from being delayed by AI prioritization (otherwise they are delayed by ca. 10s)
- Ensure that push notifications can be delivered during foci.
- Understand that they have to tap on the notification, which is not very straight-forward because it does not make sense from the user’s UX perspective.
This is an artificial limitation of Apple’s screen time framework which has no reason (no security / privacy implications here…).
Screenshots of the current flow attached.
If would be much more reasonable if there was a new ShieldActionResponse.openParentApp value that can be returned from the completion handler of the ShieldActionDelegate.handle(…) callback.
We have seen different apps use private API to achieve this, but we are afraid to do the same to avoid getting banned from the App Store.
It would be fair if Apple would level the playground for all apps and offer such an API officially.
– Frederik
PS: Tracked under FB22347946, FB18846650, FB15500681, FB15079668, FB10393561 (all without responses so far…)