Opal, a "digital well-being assistant," is updating its app today to help individuals better monitor and manage their screen time usage. While most screen time apps are focused on helping parents manage their children's screen time, Opal's goal has been to help anyone -- yes, even adults -- develop their own healthier habits around their use of distracting websites and apps. With its latest release, the company has rebuilt the service to now leverage Apple's new Screen Time API to remove apps from the phone when you're trying to focus, and to display your Screen Time data in a more readable and actionable fashion.

Launched in 2020, the app's free service has allowed users to block distractions and schedule screen time breaks throughout the day. Its paid subscription offers more granular controls -- like scheduling "time off" from specific apps and establishing recurring downtime schedules for things like work or study hours, family dinners or anything else that demands your full attention, including sleeping. Opal also offered an extreme lockdown mode called "Deep Focus" which would entirely lock you out of those apps you just can't resist. (TikTok addictions, anyone?)

To date, over 200,000 users have downloaded Opal, the company says, and have now spent over 20 million hours "focusing" using the app's tools.

Following the launch of iOS 16, the new version of Opal is now among the first to take advantage of Apple's new Screen Time API, announced at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference last year.

The API provides a way for third-party developers to create interfaces in their own apps that work with Apple's built-in screen time tools. Its arrival follows Apple's crackdown on the screen time app industry that had drawn questions from lawmakers in a 2020 antitrust hearing. Apple was being called out as it waited years after debuting its own built-in screen time controls in iOS before giving third-party developers access to interoperate with its services. In the meantime, it began rejecting apps that competed with its own tools claiming they were security risks, despite having previously approved them.