I have a set of apps that donāt appear on the blocking app chooser page, and I would like to block these apps too. I found [COMPLETED, V3.0] Add any app on my phone - #13 by Opal , but my other apps page just turns black as soon as I select it. There are no buttons for me to choose what I should do next. Is there anything i can do to block an app that I want to ?
wanted to add an additional comment: I was able to block the app by not selecting it on the allowlist, but I still canāt find the app on the blocklist. I am not sure how Opal works in the background, but surely there should be a way to select an app/add your own domains to block
Thank you for the report @opalInTheBronx , and Iām sorry youāre experiencing this issue.
The way it works is that Apple controls the page youāre seeing where you select Apps and Websites to block. We donāt have visibility on what shows up there - it should be all apps you have on your phone and websites you visited recently. Sometimes they are organized in a category which is surprising (for example FaceTime may be in the Social category). Have you looked through all categories?
Iām glad Whitelist is working for you however.
Thank you @here for reporting this issue. Thanks to you we have 2 updates:
- We added some clarifications to our FAQ page at this link about What websites and apps are currently included in the list your can chose from
- We are working on a new feature that will allow you to add custom domains to block across all browsers, regardless of wether they are included in Appleās generated list or not. Updates will be made to this thread.
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I have a simple use case - Iād like to block the Reddit app as well as reddit.com.
Blocking the Reddit app is easy with the new Opal! However, the list of websites available to be blocked seems totally random, and only occasionally includes reddit. I had it successfully blocking reddit until a day ago, but then the option to block reddit disappeared.
I know Opal is capable of blocking reddit.com. What can I do to just manually add the website to block myself instead of waiting for it to arbitrarily show up?
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Thanks for the feedback - havenāt seen a URL disappear from the list yet, that must be very frustrating. This list is generated by Apple 's Screen Time, and we (Opal) do not have control over what is included.
However, can we add our own blocking method outside of Appleās list - which we are working on in this thread. That is why I added your feedback here.
Hi there, I linked here from āOtherā app category not working - #2 by lilpit, which was merged into this thread. I too am looking to whitelist specific web sites that end up inside of the inaccessible āOtherā category.
Will the work mentioned in this thread also apply to web sites for the white list (that arenāt in Appleās Other list)? Or will it only apply to blacklists? Thank you.
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Good question, it will only apply to blocklist and not whitelist.
Can I request that it be added to whitelist as well? It would be really useful for a device that needs to be locked down except, for example, a handful of specific web sites and apps.
Okay Opal, I have got to say, I am IMPRESSED by how useful your service is. It has saved me a TON of time and made me focus on myself. One of the best new features you guys have implemented is the website blocking (and the NSFW website blocking) which is just so useful for me because I have been avoiding apps/websites with the reels/shorts feature, among of them is Youtube.
I have uninstalled Youtube for a very long time now just to avoid its distracting Shorts feature. But as you know, addictions are addictions. And i often find myself opening youtube shorts on the web instead. That was the case until you guys implemented the website blocking feature. However, it turns out that the website blockage is universal, meaning that if i want to block youtube shorts, i also have to block youtube entirely, and i rely on youtube a lot during my studies.
So to come to my suggestion I would love if you guys could implement specific endpoint-blocking for websites. In my case for instance, I would want to block websites with links that match ā https://m.youtube.com/shorts/*ā but would want to still be able to browse youtube/watch youtube videos (that are not shorts).
I want the ability to specify which pages of a website to block rather than blocking and entire website
For example YouTube.com has many great videos and courses but it is distracting so I want to allow a url that is a playlist which any url that any video in the playlist will follow to be allowed only
Or I want to only allow specific videos and block the entire websites
Or maybe I want to allow the entire YouTube website expect YouTube shorts url
This is just an example and it will be great if itās achieved either using the native screen time api or using Safari extensions