Hi everyone, I’m the developer of one sec, an app used by a large number of users globally to reduce time spent on social media and to build healthier digital habits. Because of this, we rely heavily on Apple’s Screen Time / DeviceActivity / FamilyControls, ManagedSettings APIs – and unfortunately, we’re seeing increasingly severe issues in production that directly impact hundreds of thousands of real iOS users. During the past years, we have been busy filing dozens of feedback requests for different Screen Time issues – and there has been no response from Apple at all. Developer Relations might be able to "confirm" that the bugs are present and that they ended up with the right team – but they are never addressed, neither are workarounds provided. Instead, the situation gets worse and worse. iOS 26 introduced a series of heavy regressions (which have been reported via Apple’s official bug report tool "Feedback Assistant" on iOS 26 beta 1 in June 2025 – and have not been addressed 10 Months later). This is very frustrating for us as developers, but also for our end-users who run into these issues every day. In the end this impacts our ability to build an amazing product and hurts revenue (which affects both us and Apple). 1. DeviceActivity thresholds are not firing at all This affects both: our app’s usage of the API and Apple’s own Screen Time limits Radars: FB22304617, FB20526837, FB15491936, FB12195437, FB15663329, FB18198691, FB18289475, FB19827144 2. Screen Time usage data is clearly corrupted Websites showing hundreds of hours per week Up to ~20 hours per day of usage reported for a single domain Radars: FB22304617, FB17777429, FB18464235 3. DeviceActivity thresholds reaching threshold immediately Newly introduced with iOS 26 Reported on iOS 26 beta 1 in June No response so far / no workaround DeviceActivity calls didReachThreshold immediately after creating the DeviceActivityEvent – instead of waiting till the defined threshold is actually reached. Radars: FB13696022, FB18351583, FB21320644, FB18927456, FB18061981 4. Randomly Randomizing ApplicationTokens From time to time, and without consistency, Screen Time suddenly provides new, random, unknown tokens to my app in the ShieldConfigurationDataSource and ShieldActionDelegate. This has been reported on many times before here on the dev forms, many many years back already: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/756440 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/758325 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/758325?answerId=793267022#793267022 Radars: FB14082790 and FB18764644 5. Moving Tokens from one ManagedSettingsStore to Another Removing an ApplicationToken from one SettingsStore and then adding it to another while the target app remains in foreground leads to the re-use of the ShieldConfiguration. Which can be wrong in many scenarios. It is not possible to request a re-request of the ShieldConfiguration in that scenario. Radar: FB14237883 6. Unable to Open Parent App (one sec) from Shield Many times, when a target app is blocked by a shield, the user wants to perform some action (e.g. to unlock more time for the target app via an intervention). That means, that somehow I have to forward the user from a ShieldActionDelegate back into my target app. Unfortunately, there’s no API for that. Many apps on the App Store rely on private API to achieve that, but that’s too risky for a popular app like one sec. Radar: FB15079668 7. Unable to Open Target App from an ApplicationToken When a user has completed an intervention within one sec, and they indend to to continue to the target app, there is no way that one sec can open the target app just from the token alone. Sure, there are URL schemes, but that means the user has to manually assign URL schemes to each ApplicationToken. That is not a very user friendly process (and in many cases impossible, because not every app registers URL schemes). It would be better if there was a way that my app could open a target app directly from an ApplicationToken, e.g. via an AppIntent that can be run on a button press. This way, the selected apps would remain fully private while still offering advanced functionality: struct OpenTargetAppIntent: AppIntent, OpenAppFromApplicationTokenIntent { func perform() { return .result(openAppFromApplicationToken: applicationToken) } } Radar: FB15500695 Summary Thanks a lot for taking the time to read my feedback. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me any time. I’m always happy to provide more details, logs, and steps to reproduce in my radars / feedback requests or in-person in Cupertino. It would be extremely helpful if someone from the Screen Time / DeviceActivity engineering team could: Take a look at the listed radars. Work on bug fixes and be transparent about when fixes will be shipped. Provide workarounds in the meantime. We genuinely want to build great, reliable experiences on top of Screen Time – but in its current state, it’s becoming very difficult to depend on. – Frederik

Dear Screen Time Team! The current 6 MB memory limit for the DeviceActivityMonitor extension no longer reflects the reality of modern iOS devices or the complexity of apps built on top of the Screen Time framework. When Screen Time APIs were introduced with iOS 15, hardware constraints were very different. Since then, iPhone performance and available RAM have increased significantly…but the extension memory limit has remained unchanged. My name is Frederik Riedel, and I’m the developer of the screen time app “one sec.” Our app relies heavily on FamilyControls, ManagedSettings, and DeviceActivity to provide real-time interventions that help users reduce social media usage. In practice, the 6 MB limit has become a critical bottleneck: The DeviceActivityMonitor extension frequently crashes due to memory pressure, often unpredictably. Even highly optimized implementations struggle to stay within this constraint when using Swift and multiple ManagedSettings stores. The limit makes it disproportionately difficult to build stable, maintainable, and scalable architectures on top of these frameworks. This is not just an edge case…it directly impacts reliability in production apps that depend on Screen Time APIs for core functionality. Modern system integrations like Screen Time are incredibly powerful, but they also require a reasonable amount of memory headroom to function reliably. The current limit forces developers into fragile workarounds and undermines the robustness of apps that aim to improve users’ digital wellbeing. We would greatly appreciate if you could revisit and update this restriction to better align with today’s device capabilities and developer needs. Thank you for your continued work on Screen Time and for supporting developers building meaningful experiences on top of it. Feedback: FB22279215 Best regards, Frederik Riedel (one sec app)

Hello! I make use of the new iOS 15.4 SKAdNetwork.updatePostbackConversionValue feature: SKAdNetwork.updatePostbackConversionValue(0) { error in                 if let error = error {                     print(error.localizedDescription)                 }             } I am not sure why, but I always see this error message in the console: SKAdNetwork: Error while updating conversion value: Error Domain=SKANErrorDomain Code=10 "(null)" The operation couldn’t be completed. (SKANErrorDomain error 10.) Any idea what’s going on there? What does Error Code 10 mean? Couldn't find anything in the documentation about that so far. I have the NSAdvertisingAttributionReportEndpoint key with domain (https://api2.branch.io/v1/skadnetwork/advertiser_app) in my .plist.

My app one sec uses push notifications to guide the user back to the app from a Screen Time Shield (screenshot attached). On iOS 18.1, notifications are delivered with a delay of 10+ seconds, even though they are classified as time sensitive: notificationContent.interruptionLevel = .timeSensitive notificationContent.relevanceScore = 1.0 The notification trigger is nil, which according to the documentation should show the notification banner immediately: var notificationTrigger: UNTimeIntervalNotificationTrigger? = nil "The condition that causes the system to deliver the notification. Specify nil to deliver the notification right away." In the sysdiagnose I have noticed that activity related to Apple Intelligence Priority classification delays the notification by 10 seconds ("UserNotificationsCore.IntelligenceActor"): [create, [id=43C0-B333, time=2024-09-27 06:03:26, bundle=***.riedel.one-sec], Time elapsed=10.373 sec]: Timeout of 10.0 reached. Cancelling work. [create, [id=43C0-B333, time=2024-09-27 06:03:26, bundle=***.riedel.one-sec], Time elapsed=10.377 sec]: Calling out to completion with failure(UserNotificationsCore.StepFailure.timedOut(exceeded: 10.0 seconds, summaryStatus: Optional(UserNotificationsServices.NotificationSummaryStatus.inferenceTimedOut), priorityStatus: Optional(UserNotificationsServices.NotificationPriorityStatus.inferenceTimedOut))) from 'scheduleTimeoutToPerform(after:for:)' [create, [id=43C0-B333, time=2024-09-27 06:03:26, bundle=***.riedel.one-sec], Time elapsed=10.378 sec]: Step: UserNotificationsCore.IntelligenceActor, index: 0 exceeded 10.0 seconds This seems like a bug to me, time sensitive notifications should be exempted from being analyzed for priority, especially if that comes at the cost of delaying notifications by 10 seconds. Tracked in Radar: FB15255061

Hello, I’m building an app that helps people spend less time on social media apps. For that, I make heavy use of Apple’s Screen Time APIs, such as ManagedSettings and FamilyControls. When an app is locked using a ShieldConfiguration, the user has to open my app in order to unlock it (e.g. enter a code). This is very cumbersome because no documented API exists to open the parent app (=my app) from the ShieldActionDelegate (also part of my app) when the user presses a button of the ShieldConfiguration. The ShieldActionDelegate callback just offers three options in its ShieldActionResponse: .none .defer .close .openParentApp is missing. We are working around this limitation by sending a local push notification that the user has to tap on. This has multiple drawbacks: It has to be ensured that notification permission has been granted. It has to be ensured that notifications can be delivered even while focus is enabled. Features such as Apple Intelligence notification summaries and notification prioritization can heavily delay delivering notifications and thus frustrate the user. Neither my users nor myself do understand why this is not possible in a smoother way, at least according to the documentation. There are 3rd party apps that have such functionality, they can directly open their own app from a button press in the Shield, see here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/applocker-passcode-lock-apps/id1132845904 It would be great if Apple could level the playfield for all developers and document how this is achievable, because technically it clearly is. Thanks a lot and have a great day!

Hello Albert! I am experiencing some strange bugs around DeviceActivityEvents (part of the DeviceActivity framework) on iOS 26 / iOS 26.1 / iOS 26.2 beta: 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. The property 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 / iOS 26.1 / iOS 26.2 beta? Only workaround I have found is to ask users to revoke and 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, so it is not a permanent solution unfortunately. Feedback (incl. sysdiagnoses and sample project) is filed under: FB18061981 FB18927456 One of our users has filed their own feedback request as well: FB20817853 Thanks a lot for any help on this!

Hello! I saw that iOS 14 shows a little icon on the App Store for each developer (see attached screenshot). Is it possible to change that icon and to replace it with the company logo? I‘d think that this option should be available somewhere on iTunes Connect but I couldn't find it so far... Thanks a lot and have a nice day! – Frederik