Hello, I am working on an app that schedules a device activity monitor from the screen time API. I noticed that sometimes scheduling an activity monitor won’t work and instead I see this log: Canceling request to […].DeviceActivityMonitorExtension because it exceeded its allowed time. What does this mean? What exactly is exceeding its allowed time? Would love to get some feedback on this so I can prevent this from happening. Thanks a lot for any help and have a nice day!

Hello HealthKit Experts & Enthusiasts! I am building an app called one sec which forces people to take a deep breath before they can use social media apps (it’s using Shortcuts Automations for that). One important feature of one sec is the Good Morning Countdown: For a specified time after waking up (e.g. 30mins) selected apps are blocked completely. This helps to start the day screen-free. They way it works is, the user grants access to read HKCategoryTypeIdentifier.sleepAnalysis data. I have implemented a HKObserverQuery and enableBackgroundDelivery in order to be informed whenever new HKCategoryTypeIdentifier.sleepAnalysis becomes available. I noticed that when I have my device connected to Xcode, this works as expected. However, when I quit the app and launch it from my Home Screen, my observer query is not informed about new sleep data (except when my app is running in foreground). Any ideas? Furthermore, I have noticed that sometimes sleep data is provided delayed to HealthKit, many minutes (sometimes even longer) after waking up, no sleep samples are to be found in the Health app. Of course, for my app it is crucial to get accurate + timely so apps can be blocked accordingly. Is this an issue that the Apple Watch first needs to send the samples to the phone? Thanks a lot for your help!

Hello fellow Screen Time developers! I have bee experimenting with the ActivityCategoryPolicy.all(except: allowList) API of the ManagedSettings framework in order to provide a digital detox feature to my app, where ALL apps would be blocked, except some important ones (phone, messages, maps). The apps to be exempted can be configured by the user via the FamilyActivitySelection(). However, I am experiencing a strange bug, where all apps are restricted / blocked, even the ones that are set to be exempted and are part of the allowList Set. Instead of not restricting allowed apps at all, these apps are restricted with a generic shield (screenshot below) – a concrete shield is not requested for them from my ShieldConfigurationDataSource. I have also filed a radar under this number, attached is a minimalistic sample project and video that shows how to reproduce this: FB15500605 (no response so far) I have also seen other people report on this issue, but couldn't find any useful information there: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/750988 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/762287 Thanks a lot for your help, and have a nice day!

Hello! I am experiencing some strange bugs around DeviceActivityEvents: When creating a DeviceActivityEvent we can assign a threshold and applicationTokens. The idea is, that after the user has spent said threshold on said apps, eventDidReachThreshold is called. includesPastActivity is set to false. On iOS 26 however, it happens (quite reliably after updating to a new beta seed) quite often that eventDidReachThreshold is called immediately (after a couple of seconds) instead of waiting for the threshold to be met. Is anyone else seeing similar issues on iOS 26? Only workaround I have found is to ask users to re-grant Screen Time permissions. This only holds for about two weeks though or at most until the next iOS 26 beta update is installed. Feedback filed under: FB18061981 FB18927456

Hello, my app is frequently loosing / forgetting the Screen Time Permission that had been granted previously on iOS 26. I have experienced it myself, sysdiagnose is in this radar: FB18997699 But also also my App Store users who have updated to iOS 26 already have reported this bug. It would be great if Apple could ensure that this bug is addressed before iOS 26 is released to the public.

Dear Screen Time Team! The Screen Time passcode can be brute-forced without rate limiting by repeatedly attempting guesses through the "Erase All Content and Settings" flow. This allows unlimited passcode attempts with no delay, lockout, or escalation, effectively defeating the purpose of the Screen Time passcode as a parental control mechanism. Impact: Children can bypass Screen Time protections by guessing the passcode No rate limiting enables trivial brute-force attacks (especially for 4-digit codes) Undermines trust in Screen Time as a parental control system Creates real-world safety risks for families relying on Screen Time restrictions Publicly shared methods (e.g. on TikTok) increase likelihood of widespread abuse Steps to Reproduce: Enable Screen Time and set a passcode Open Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Erase All Content and Settings When prompted for the Screen Time passcode, enter an incorrect code Repeat the process with different guesses Expected Result: After a small number of incorrect attempts, the system should: enforce exponential backoff delays, or temporarily lock further attempts, or require Apple ID authentication Attempts should be rate-limited across system flows Actual Result: Unlimited passcode attempts are allowed No delay, lockout, or penalty is applied Enables rapid brute-force guessing of the Screen Time passcode Notes: This appears to bypass standard passcode protections that exist in other parts of iOS The issue is especially severe for 4-digit Screen Time passcodes (10,000 combinations) The attack surface is exposed through a system-level reset flow Suggested Fix: Introduce global rate limiting for Screen Time passcode attempts across all entry points Apply exponential backoff after failed attempts Require Apple ID authentication after multiple failures Consider enforcing 6-digit minimum passcodes for Screen Time Log and unify attempt counters across system components Severity: Critical (Security vulnerability enabling brute-force of parental control passcode) See TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@aldanaisthebest12170/video/7615053429500644621 Feedback request: FB22263276 – Frederik (one sec app)

My app Homie allows users to pin certain values, accessories or scenes to their menu bar for quick access, such as HMAccessory. To remember which devices and accessories a user has pinned to the Menu Bar, I store their uniqueIdentifier. However, I noticed that from time to time this uniqueIdentifier changes (this often happens after restarting the computer or installing a macOS software update). In this case, the device is not re-identified and the pinned-status is lost. The user is confused, because they think my app didn't store their information probably. And I am confused because the identifier is not consistent across app-starts. For reference: I am not asking to have consistent identifiers between different devices, I am asking to have consistent identifiers on the very same device. Reference: FB9052957

I am using the DeviceActivityMonitor eventDidReachThreshold functionality, but it became very unreliable on the iOS 17.5 beta. Anyone experiencing similar problems? Any known workarounds?

Hello fellow Screen Time Fans! I am encountering a strange problem since I started working with the Screen Time framework, and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong: Imagine the app has two ManagedSettingsStores: one to block apps during work hours (let’s say from 9am to 5pm) and one to block apps in the evening (let’s say from 5:30pm till midnight). Imagine, the user has blocked Instagram in both. When the user has Instagram open at 4:59pm it shows the Block during Work Hours Shield (so far, so good). At 5pm, the shield is removed, and the user can use Instagram. Then, at 5:30 the a shield is activated again: this time, the Instagram token is added to the evening store. However, there is no new ShieldConfiguration requested from the ShieldConfigurationDataSource. Instead, the previous shield from the work hour block is re-used and shown. To me, it appears that the Framework does not request new shields, when the token is moved from one store to another while the app remains in foreground. The Shield is only re-rendered when the user closes the shielded app and re-opens it. This is really confusing behavior and I would like to fix it. Did anyone here encounter something similar, and has a suggestion or workaround? My feedback is also documented in FB14237883.

I have noticed that when I select the app token of the youtube app to be blocked via a ManagedSettingsStore, the youtube website is blocked as well (which is a good and intended behavior IMO). But how do I know in the ShieldConfigurationDataSource’s override func configuration(shielding webDomain: WebDomain, in category: ActivityCategory) -> ShieldConfiguration to which ManagedSettingsStore the WebDomain’s token is related? We use different ManagedSettingsStores for different block purposes, which differentiate in their ShieldConfiguration. Thanks a lot and have a great day!

Hello! I am developing an app (Homie) which uses HomeKit to give users access to their HomeKit devices + accessories via the Mac‘s Menu Bar. One feature is also to pin sensors (e.g., temperature) to the Menu Bar: To get updates to sensor values I am using the HMAccessoryDelegate‘s didUpdateValueForCharacteristic method. Some users are reporting that updates to Homie are passed along very infrequently und unreliably. I have set up a test with the HomeKit Accessory Simulator in which values are consistently passed along instantly. This problem is hard to debug for me, that‘s why I‘m asking what recommended ways would be to tackle this. I noticed that sometimes the HomeKit framework does not deliver updates unless the Home app is opened on my Mac or iPhone. But not sure if this is expected or related to that problem and what I can do about it. Any feedback & help is appreciated 🙏 Reference:

Hello good morning lovely ShazamKit team! I was wondering if there's a way to evaluate the result (SHMatch) to be able to estimate if this is a very good match (the catalog is very certain that this is correct), or if this is at the lower end of the spectrum of certainty. Thanks a lot and have a nice day! – Frederik

Hello! I am looking to access data on how many times (on a specific day, week, or month) an alphanumeric subscription offer code has been redeemed (to track affiliate marketing). Right now, I am using the Reporter.jar tool like this: java -jar Reporter.jar p=Reporter.properties a=1234567 m=Robot.XML Sales.getReport 123456789, Subscription, Summary, Daily, 20230120, 1_3 As a result, a long list of subscription events is downloaded, however it is not clear which date a particular event did occur on. It seems like actually they pile up with every additional day. These are the columns that I can see: App Name, App Apple ID, Subscription Name, Subscription Apple ID, Subscription Group ID, Standard Subscription Duration, Subscription Offer Name, Promotional Offer ID, Customer Price, Customer Currency, Developer Proceeds, Proceeds Currency, Preserved Pricing, Proceeds Reason, Client, Device, State, Country, Active Standard Price Subscriptions, Active Free Trial Introductory Offer Subscriptions, Active Pay Up Front Introductory Offer Subscriptions, Active Pay As You Go Introductory Offer Subscriptions, Free Trial Promotional Offer Subscriptions, Pay Up Front Promotional Offer Subscriptions, Pay As You Go Promotional Offer Subscriptions, Free Trial Offer Code Subscriptions, Pay Up Front Offer Code Subscriptions, Pay As You Go Offer Code Subscriptions, Marketing Opt-Ins, Billing Retry, Grace Period, Subscribers As you can see, a date is not among them. Would be great if anyone has feedback on how to make this happen!

Hello! I am using the eventDidReachThreshold callback in the DeviceActivityMonitor in order to shield a target app after the user has spend x amount of time on it (e.g. x = 5 minutes). Many times this works fine, and I can trigger my shield after the specified threshold has been met. However sometimes, when they leave the target app before the threshold has been reached, the eventDidReachThreshold callback gets called randomly while they are doing something else on their phone (e.g. using a different app, on the Home Screen, phone locked…). From my perspective this does not make sense, since they are not actively spending time on the target app, and that time should not be counted towards the target app’s threshold. And it is also very confusing for the users because they will then find a blocked target app even though they haven’t used their time budget completely. This is not related to the intervalDidStart / intervalDidEnd callbacks, because they are not correlating with the timing of when the eventDidReachThreshold callback is called unexpectedly. Any ideas what this could be related to?

Hello, I am using a DeviceActivityEvent to limit access to an app after the user has spent x minutes on it. Sometimes it can happen that a DeviceActivitySchedule spans from 11:55pm - 12:25am (just an example). In these cases, I have noticed, the DeviceActivityMonitorExtension’s eventDidReachThreshold is not called after the user has reached the threshold time interval in the observed app. I assume this is because we have transitioned over midnight and something weird happens to the DeviceActivitySchedule. I’ve tried adding the day components to the DeviceActivitySchedule as well, but then it fails completely. Any advice how to handle this? I could, of course, create two separate DeviceActivitySchedules: one for before midnight, and one for after. But depending on the user’s real app usage that could lead to slightly different (and unexpected) behavior.