As someone who really struggles with self control and moderation, Opal’s scheduled sessions and app limits are incredibly helpful for maintaining control of my life. I will often set limits when I’m clear-headed to help hold myself accountable when I’m high or overtired or stuck on my phone for whatever reason. Unfortunately, I have discovered a few ways to circumvent the blocks, so even the un-cancellable blocks are no longer effective.
- Manually changing time allows circumvention of scheduled blocks and app limits
- I don’t know enough about the kind of permissions and app on an Iphone can have, so I’m not sure if it’s possible to block manually changing date and time. If it’s not, I don’t have a good solution to this problem, but it’s worth looking into correcting as it has rendered all blocks effectively useless, especially for my more addictive habits.
- The 1 minute block warning allows time to change the limit before it takes effect.
- When I’m playing a game or scrolling through instagram and the “1 app will be blocked in one minute” banner comes up, I will often absent-mindedly click on it and just change the limit before it hits. I have corrected this problem by turning off banners, but that doesn’t keep me from paying attention to how long I have been using an app in the back of my mind and changing the limit. I think it would be cool if there was an option that would allow me to edit a limit or block, but that edit wouldn’t take effect until the next day - this wouldn’t prevent me from setting limits to help in the future, but it would stop me from changing a limit to suit an impulse or to absent-mindedly continue indulging in the mindless dopamine. I think a feature along those lines would make limits much more effective - especially because if I can’t change the limit to suit me in the moment, I likely would not change it at all.
I am not currently aware of any other block-circumvention methods, so I think eliminating these two would render the un-skippable blocks incredibly effective.