The Issue
I’ve been loving Opal, but one feature I’d love to see is a 1-time-use button of “just 1 more minute” on the block screen. Too many times have I been about to hit send on a text on Instagram when my App Limit session expired and I have to go to the Opal app and renew the whole time on the limit, even if I just wanted the tiniest bit of extra time to finish what I was doing. Given that this is basically a feature of Scheduled Blocks in the Breaks, I am wondering if this can be extended to App Limits as well.
Harnessing It
An obvious argument against this feature is that it may encourage people to hit the button and continue on with what they were doing before their time expired. I think emphasizing that it is something that it is extremely limited is the solution. A countdown timer that shows the remaining seconds until the app is blocked again while you’re using it or a pop up that clarifies that you’re going to use your scarce ability will combat this. Additionally, how scarce it is could become another customizable thing for each App Limit— how many “give me a second”’s you’re allowed to do consecutively, or if it’s just once a day, or if it’s none at all for that particular limit.
Another, Easier to Implement Solution
This whole issue could also be circumvented by just letting users manually set the time limit on an app limit to be up right then. This allows people to unblock it, finish up, and then reblock it. To clarify, this should only let users decrease the time, not increase.
Wrapping Up
Right now, the Block Now feature has kind of worked for me to tackle this issue. However, I’d much prefer if it worked as part of the App Limit, not as an outsider independent from the App Limit that blocks the set of apps, hence why my suggestions are more geared towards being additions to the App Limits and not new things like Block Now or Lock.
Thank you very much for your time and I’d love to hear people’s thoughts and suggestions for this idea!