Chrome Extension - depreciated; Please use Mac app instead!

I didnt know that you could take a break on the google chrome extension for about 6 months but now that I know I can the app has become only marginally useful. There should be a deep focus mode and it should be able to interface with the opal app on my Iphone.

The app for the iPhone sucks, it crashes constantly and if I do delete it on occasion it makes me take a whole new test to get back in and forgets all my blocks. Focus on getting the app to stop crashing and be more user friendly. I dont give a fuck about rocks and I dont want notifications from an app thats supposed to help me focus - not give me notifications on my phone that dont matter.

That being said - thanks!

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Hi

I have a question, does Opal support blocking of websites on Chrome?


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Thank you for reporting this. The answer is yes it should, but we just identified an issue and it will be fixed in the next release on Monday.

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@kenneth I have not been able to block Chrome iOS websites for over two weeks. I have sent numerous bug reports and the team just answers ā€œHave you tried to reload blocks?ā€ or ā€œWe no longer support Chrome extension,ā€ neither of which is helpful. Further, I canā€™t add Chrome websites I havenā€™t visited (i.e. TikTok, which Iā€™ve never actually visited) to the blocklist. Can you fix these issues ASAP? The only reason I pay for Opal is because of its ability to block Chrome websites!

I wanted to personally apologise for the issue your encountered.

We have identified an issue that was introduced in V3.45 (released on Dec 5 2023) where Opal has stopped blocking Websites on Chrome and other third party browsers (Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Brave, etc).

We just fixed this issue and it will be included in the next release of Opal on Monday. If you update your app on Monday it will be fixed.

I am sorry about this experience and it is not the experience we want gems to have. It took us more than than is acceptable to identify the issue since it is critical - and we will strive to identify and fix issues faster in the future. Thank you for your report, which helped us identify and fix the issue.

Kenneth

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@kenneth just updated the app and reloaded blocks. Twitter.com on Chrome is still accessible, despite being blocked. Please advise

Can you confirm that you are on version 3.49 of Opal or latest? Is there an Update option here?

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@kenneth confirming I updated Monday but to 3.48 :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming: Confirmed 3.49 fixes the Google Chrome blocking issue :pray: :pray: :pray:

Hi,
Iā€™ve added Facebook url in the list of websites/urls to be blocked. However I can still access Facebook via Chrome whereas itā€™s blocked on safari. Is there a fix for that?
Interestingly within chrome itā€™s blocked at one tab and on other I can still access it, even after refreshing that page.





Hi!
First of all, I really like Opal and itā€™s a good app to use paired with my other productivity app.

Something that has come to my attention is the fact that if you block a website in a search engine (in my case, the Ecosia app), it doesnā€™t reblock itself after the time limit is up (in my case 5 minutes). To put it in a situation, I unblock Facebook for 5 minutes, but after 5 minutes, the website isnā€™t blocked and I can keep mindlessly scrolling on Facebook.

The only way Iā€™ve realised I can make sure the website gets reblocked, is if I fully close my app, which isnā€™t something you find yourself easily able to do when youā€™re mindlessly scrolling. Otherwise, the website can still be used, even if I just leave the app and come back later.

I hope Iā€™ve been able to make myself be understood and I hope something can be done about it! Iā€™m sure other people have a similar experience :smiley: Opal is really good to hinder me from going on Facebook too much, but once I unblock it for 5 minutes itā€™s easy for me to fall back in this pattern :frowning:

Thank you very much :hugs:

Hey there @here,

Happy to help. To clarify, are you using Facebook on a Chrome extension? If so, unfortunately, Apple has implemented some parameters that make Chrome blocking rather difficult. To bypass this, weā€™d recommend ensuring that you add a block to Chrome in your Session:

I hope that helps, and sorry for the delay in response!

All the best,
Sarah @ Opal

Hello,

After several tries, I finally understand how to reply to posts on this forum. The problem I am mentioning is entirely different from the one the first post about the websites not being blocked on chrome. In my case, Opal effectively blocks Facebook on Ecosia, and I cannot access it unless I use one of my unblocks.

The problem I am however facing, is that contrary to the app Messenger, the website Facebook doesnā€™t automatically reblocks. To try to be more clear, after the time of my unblock is used up, messenger gets blocked again. This doesnā€™t happen with Facebook: if I decided to unblock Facebook for 5 minutes to doom scroll just a bit, I will still be able to doom scroll after 5 minutes, because the website doesnā€™t get blocked by Opal. For Facebook to be blocked again, I need to manually quit Ecosia and restart it (which isnā€™t likely to happen when Iā€™m doomscrolling on Facebook).

I hope Iā€™ve made my issue a bit more clear. Opal is amazing to stop procrastination, but this lack of reblocking annihilates any usefulness that Opal has. Could something be done about it? Just today Iā€™ve doomscrolled for over 2 hours on Facebook because Opal doesnā€™t block it again after the time limit is over (correcting this would thus greatly help me :grimacing:)

Also, if messenger could stop being blocked when we want only Facebook to be blocked, that would be amazing, poor messenger being the ā€œcollateral damageā€ of blocking Facebook :smiling_face_with_tear:

I have the chrome extension synced to the iPhone app. But when I start a Focus session on the app, nothing gets blocked in Chrome. I tested with a Whitelist instead, and that gets synced, but for Blocklists nothing gets blocked in Chrome.

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Thank you for flagging this Ernest;

Although your Sessions will automatically be imported from your iPhone to your Chrome extension, you will need to recreate the Block List in the Chrome extension to select websites you want to block.

I updated our FAQ on this topic: Opal FAQ | How do I use Opalā€™s Mac app?

Does this help?

Hi kenneth,

Thanks for the reply.

The problem is that I can only edit the block list in the chrome extension when sync is off. When I turn on sync, it deselects all the toggles for sites in the block list.

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Got the same issue. As soon as I enable sync in Chrome, my whole block-list is empty.

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same exact issue here. Seems to be broken as of the New major update.

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Thank you for reporting this - we will be working on a solution.

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I signed into the Opal app on Chrome, and it manages to recognise my scheduled work and wind-down times. However, the settings for Chrome allow me to take a break whenever I want, while on my phone they are set to ā€˜Timeoutā€™. Is there any way I can change this? It is far too easy to take a break!

Feature Requested By: Amrith Shanbhag
Number of Votes: 12
View Original Post: https://opal.nolt.io/152

A Chrome extension for Opal would be game changing.