Review Insights · App Store
Opal: Screen Time Control
Opal OS · 71,741 ratings · ★ 4.8
4.8
★★★★★
71,741 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 21 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"work"
7 negative reviews mention this · 33% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Buggy, Doesn’t Work. When I first got the app and payed for it, it worked like a charm. Then all of the bugs came. Half the time it doesn’t even block and I have to keep manually resyncing blocks. Or if I got on a break for 5 minutes half the time it doesn’t bl…" - areebbabu
2
"screen"
6 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
3
"phone"
4 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
4
"other"
4 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
5
"free"
4 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Do not recommend if you use socials for your business. Didn’t want. Don’t use. Cancelled free trial and got charged anyway. It interferes with my regular business so I don’t need it. Can’t get refund. Annoyed with this business model. Do not recommend." - KeliaBrieann
6
"doesn"
4 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Buggy, Doesn’t Work. When I first got the app and payed for it, it worked like a charm. Then all of the bugs came. Half the time it doesn’t even block and I have to keep manually resyncing blocks. Or if I got on a break for 5 minutes half the time it doesn’t bl…" - areebbabu
7
"block"
4 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Buggy, Doesn’t Work. When I first got the app and payed for it, it worked like a charm. Then all of the bugs came. Half the time it doesn’t even block and I have to keep manually resyncing blocks. Or if I got on a break for 5 minutes half the time it doesn’t bl…" - areebbabu
8
"every"
4 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Blocks do not work. Every single time I set a time limit it cuts all the time before I use it. Then I have to use my emergency pass. They say it’s a bug and their AI bot gives you a 20 step fix but every time I use the app it happens again. It’s a $90 yearly s…" - Readergrrl
9
"love"
3 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
10
"opal"
3 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
11
"hours"
3 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
12
"something"
3 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star. I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably. Opal says that it only uses a few perc…" - pnw_21
📋 All 21 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Cannot cancel
Any good this app might offer is lost by my inability to cancel before my trial period ends.
Originally 5 stars, now unfortunately 1 star
I had love this app because it was really helping me. But my battery was getting wrecked by it. My 1.5 year old phone could not last past 6pm, despite my screen time and usage being down considerably.
Opal says that it only uses a few percentage points per day, and while that technically is true about the app itself, it’s false about the impact the app has. This is incredibly frustrating because they do not take complaints about this seriously.
On the last day I used Opal before deleting it, it ran for 43 hours and 27 mins in the background *in the span of a 24 hour day*. Like how is that even possible?? I wish I could upload screenshots because I saved this since it was so absurd.
While it’s running in the background, it’s killing your other apps. For example, my Safari usage on that above-mentioned day was 1 hour 13 mins on screen and 0 hours/mins in the background. And yet, this limited usage of light internet browsing (literally just comparing the prices and availability of different running shoes and not like watching videos or something else resource-intensive) was 24% of my battery drain by the time my phone died in the early evening. This cause of this was Opal CONSTANTLY running in the background checking on what site I was on.
I’m very disappointed. I’d really, really liked it before this.
Opal says that it only uses a few percentage points per day, and while that technically is true about the app itself, it’s false about the impact the app has. This is incredibly frustrating because they do not take complaints about this seriously.
On the last day I used Opal before deleting it, it ran for 43 hours and 27 mins in the background *in the span of a 24 hour day*. Like how is that even possible?? I wish I could upload screenshots because I saved this since it was so absurd.
While it’s running in the background, it’s killing your other apps. For example, my Safari usage on that above-mentioned day was 1 hour 13 mins on screen and 0 hours/mins in the background. And yet, this limited usage of light internet browsing (literally just comparing the prices and availability of different running shoes and not like watching videos or something else resource-intensive) was 24% of my battery drain by the time my phone died in the early evening. This cause of this was Opal CONSTANTLY running in the background checking on what site I was on.
I’m very disappointed. I’d really, really liked it before this.
Do not recommend if you use socials for your business
Didn’t want. Don’t use. Cancelled free trial and got charged anyway. It interferes with my regular business so I don’t need it. Can’t get refund. Annoyed with this business model. Do not recommend.
Lock without permission
At my 180days’ streak suddenly it locked all of my apps and I couldn’t do anything in app to solve it, so I had to remove the app.
Buggy, Doesn’t Work
When I first got the app and payed for it, it worked like a charm. Then all of the bugs came. Half the time it doesn’t even block and I have to keep manually resyncing blocks. Or if I got on a break for 5 minutes half the time it doesn’t block me again after 5 mins. Complete scam of an app.
Bad
This app is never doing what it says it will do, just poorly programmed maybe and it’s annoying
Constantly locks apps before limits are reached
locks apps before the limits are reached all the time. I regularly wake up with my apps already locked for the day when I haven’t spent a single minute on it. Should spend less time on programming awards and more time on the apps functionality.
It’s just screen time control
It’s Apples screen time control/focus mode glamorized for $100/year.
No thank you.
No thank you.
Blocks do not work
Every single time I set a time limit it cuts all the time before I use it. Then I have to use my emergency pass. They say it’s a bug and their AI bot gives you a 20 step fix but every time I use the app it happens again. It’s a $90 yearly subscription, fix your app so I don’t have to take 1000 steps to make it work the way it’s supposed to. Getting myself a brick because I’ve had enough of it.
Overcomplicated and Cluttered
If you have an iPhone, just use Screen Time. Opal is overcomplicated and cluttered with too many features. I wanted something simple to block distractions, but instead it felt like I needed a tutorial and a project plan just to use it. Apple already gives you basic app limits and downtime built in, and for most people that’s enough. Opal may work for some users, but for me it was more hassle than help.
The math doesn’t check out
In theory this app is great, but the timers don’t work. I have two blocks, one that is 90 minutes of certain apps and one that is 9-5. Almost every day the 90 minute timer blocks when it is physically impossible to have the apps open, and screen time doesn’t show anywhere near that amount. It’s simple math here, why is summing some times so broken?
Hard to cancel subscription
They make you jump through hoops to cancel the renewal. Would not recommend.
Midnight cutoff, does not block apps
Stops working after midnight. Super annoying
Can brick your phone
Love this app and have been using it for years but there’s a bug where sometimes if you click the button to unblock an app it will completely freeze your phone. Never been fixed the entire time
There is a huge bug - please fix
When I open my phone in the morning it says it reached the limit of apps. I can’t reload, turnoff or do anything other than delete the app for Opal to work again. Please fix
It's a huge battery drain.
This app cost me 40% battery overnight on standby and made me late for work.
App is trash only wants money
The app asks for money it’s marketed as free but it’s a subscription service preying on weak people
App crashing with new update
First off, I love this app it’s great at keeping me focused and productive. However the app keeps crashing upon startup with the new update. I open the app and it’s there for maybe half a second before it crashes.
free version is counterintuitive
i’ve tried using this app for a couple weeks now and all it has done is piss me off. let’s say i give myself 1 hour on tiktok and then it gets blocked for 3, now let’s say i use tiktok for 40 minutes and then i go do work for 5 hours. when i come back and reward myself with some more screen time, tik tok gets blocked 20 minutes later. this doesn’t feel justified because it’s been 5 hours since i’ve opened the app- if i had just scrolled for an extra 20 minutes earlier in the day and let the time run out, it would’ve been unblocked for the full hour that i wanted. this is now an incentive for me to use the full hour every time i go on the app, even if i wouldn’t have/don’t want to, because the other option is to unblock the app, so now i either have to spend a full hour + 20 minutes until it’s blocked again or start the cycle all over by leaving some change. it doesn’t make any sense to me. i’ve literally found myself thinking “i want to go do this other thing, but i need to spend another 10 minutes in this app so it doesn’t block me next time i use it”. maybe this is something that would be better with the pro version, but why on earth would i try the pro version when the free version has only done damage? so counterintuitive.
Incredibly Buggy
This app has cut down on a lot of screen time for me. I’ve had both the paid and unpaid versions.
However, the bugs this app hasn’t made the experience pleasant. There were times that the app bugged out and put my phone into deep focus mode for HOURS blocking EVERY SINGLE APP i had. Luckily when this has happened, i didn’t have any places to go or was with someone else whose phone could be relied on for Ubers and what not.
With the free version, it will often make a 15 minute break indefinite until I go back to the app. Sometimes I don’t even have to be on a break, and it will just have every app available when it’s supposed to be blocking them. My phone and this app is fully up to date btw.
It’s certainly a helpful app to reduce phone usage, but also annoys me quite a bit.
However, the bugs this app hasn’t made the experience pleasant. There were times that the app bugged out and put my phone into deep focus mode for HOURS blocking EVERY SINGLE APP i had. Luckily when this has happened, i didn’t have any places to go or was with someone else whose phone could be relied on for Ubers and what not.
With the free version, it will often make a 15 minute break indefinite until I go back to the app. Sometimes I don’t even have to be on a break, and it will just have every app available when it’s supposed to be blocking them. My phone and this app is fully up to date btw.
It’s certainly a helpful app to reduce phone usage, but also annoys me quite a bit.
Constantly buggy
App will freeze or crash upon many various gestures & functions. Laggy, unresponsive, and I have a newer iPhone that doesn’t have issues with other apps. Makes for an inconvenient UX
Sentiment summary
95%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
3%
Negative (1-2★)