Phone distraction is mostly reflexive. You pick up your phone because you feel a pang of boredom or anxiety, not because you made a conscious decision to check Instagram. Opal's Screen Time API catches that reflex at the system level. The question is whether that same approach translates to a computer, where your distractions are woven into your actual work. On a Mac, the thing pulling you off task might be Slack, and Slack is also where your team communicates. That's a different problem, and it needs a different solution.
Opal's iPhone app is excellent. Kenneth Schlenker (ex-Google) built the company around a simple bet: people waste hours on their phones and they know it. Opal was one of the first apps to use Apple's Screen Time API when it launched in late 2022, and they used it well.
The same company that built that excellent iPhone experience also shipped a Mac app that barely functions. Here are the documented problems:
Community forum pushback has been significant. Users have called the pricing "almost as much as Netflix" and "incredibly high for what it offers, for essentially an app blocker." On iPhone, $100/year is defensible. On Mac, $100/year gets you a redirect-based blocker with a known bypass bug.
Focus Gems. Seasonal achievements. Leaderboards. Friend challenges. For some people, this genuinely works. The dopamine of unlocking a new Gem can redirect the same reward-seeking behavior that was pulling you toward Instagram.
But there's a tension. A leaderboard is a social feature. Social features create notifications, comparisons, and the urge to check in. Opal is asking you to focus by giving you another thing to check.
For knowledge workers trying to get through four hours of deep focus on a Mac, a leaderboard is noise. And it's worth noting that leaderboards, Focus Reports, and the full usage profile are all iOS-only features. On Mac, you get none of this.
My focus doesn't break on my phone. It breaks on my Mac. It breaks when I open a new tab and end up somewhere else. It breaks when I bounce between Slack, email, and three projects without committing to any of them.
Hugo takes a different approach. You tell it what you're working on. Hugo's AI evaluates every tab and app against that goal. Same website, different context, different outcome.
My honest recommendation: run both. Opal on your iPhone for screen time. Hugo on your Mac for deep focus during work. They solve different problems on different devices.
Free tier: 2 sessions/day, 45 min each. Pro: $12/mo or $99/yr. 14-day trial.
Download Hugo for freeOpal is a $10 million company that built one of the best screen time apps on iOS and a barely functional focus tool on Mac. The iPhone app earns every bit of its reputation. The Mac app coasts on it.
A company with $11.8 million in funding and 66 employees can fix a bypass bug in less than twelve months. They chose not to. That tells you where the Mac sits in their priorities.
Ready to stop losing time to distractions?
Hugo uses AI to keep you on task. No blocklist required. Set your goal, and Hugo evaluates every tab in real time.
AI-Powered Focus
Hugo sits between you and distraction. It hides your apps, locks down your browser, and uses AI to silently decide if what you're opening is actually work - so you never have to burn willpower again.