The App That Helped Me Cut Down Screen Time and Stay Productive
Saving 10 years worth of screen time using one iOS app.
Over the years, I have been in a constant struggle to reduce screen time across all my devices — phone, tablet, and laptop.
When Apple launched Screen Time and later Focus Modes in iOS 16, I was getting hopeful. However, that didn’t work.
Even with the most aggressive settings, both Screen Time and Focus Modes hardly introduced any friction to accessing my most distracting apps. At its most extreme, unlimited access was only one “Are you sure?” modal away.
Granted, it was better than nothing. I can also confidently say that using them somewhat reduced my screen time, but there was more room for improvement.
In my pursuit of reducing screen time even further, I tried more third-party apps — Freedom, ClearSpace, and ScreenZen — but with very little success.
Then, one day a coworker told me about Opal. He was gushing lyrically about how the app dramatically improved his productivity and focus.
I am so glad I had that conversation because Opal finally brought an end to my search for a screen management app on iOS.
In this blog post, I will walk you through my experience with Opal and give you a 30-day pass if you want to try it for yourself.
Let’s get started.
Focus Sessions
At its core, Opal lets you set up chunks of time where you can’t access a set of apps or websites.
Here’s one easy example.
- Say your day job hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM.
- You find apps such as TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn very distracting
- Solution: You set up a focus session from 9–5 every weekday where you can’t access TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
You have full control over the time windows and groups of apps/websites. Everything is fully customizable.
I know what you are thinking — “You can do the same with Screen Time and Freedom, how is Opal any different?”.
Opal’s superpower is “Session Difficulty”.
Session Difficulty
Opal has 3 difficulty levels:
- Normal — You can snooze and cancel the session at any time.
- Timeout — There will be increasing delays before you can snooze again.
- Deep Focus — You can’t snooze or end the session early.
Most apps have the Normal mode. The problem with this mode is easy to identify: no friction to stop you from ending the focus session.
I have seen the Timeout mode in a few other apps. It’s helpful. Let’s say you snooze your session for the first time. Opal will introduce a timeout next so that the earliest you can snooze again is 15 minutes from now. After that, if you snooze again, the time window increases to 30 minutes. So, with every snooze, you are forced to stay in your focus sessions for longer periods at a time.
Finally, the most aggressive one — Deep Focus.
There’s nothing you can do to access your distracting apps until the focus session ends.
Uninstall the app? Won’t work. Opal has a feature you can turn on (and I highly recommend you to!), that will prevent you from uninstalling the app when a focus session is in progress.
I always set my focus sessions to Deep Focus.
My Experience — Stats & Reports
I have regularly used Opal for more than 8 months now.
After experimenting with many setups, from super complex (>4 focus sessions) to simple (<2 focus sessions) setups.
As usual the case for me, the simple setup reigned supreme.
Here’s what my setup looks like:
- 9 AM to 5 PM — Yelp Focus
- 8:30 PM to 8:30 AM — Sleepy Sleep
- Both are Deep Focus sessions
- Some notable distracting apps/websites that are blocked — YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit.
Every week Opal sends a weekly focus report. Here’s one I recently received.
As you can tell, that’s a lot of data to help you make informed decisions.
If you are struggling to reduce your screen time, just like me, I would highly recommend checking out Opal.
You can use my 30-day guess pass to try it out for free before you commit. To be fully transparent, I get nothing in return if you sign up using my link.
Closing Thoughts
Okay, folks, that’s all for today.
Thank you for your time. I hope you found it valuable.
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