Opal is the best known screen time app on iPhone and it is genuinely good. It is also $99.99 a year. This page sets out what it does well, the three reasons people go looking for something else, and how Handover approaches the same problem from a different direction, with location rules, step goals and barcode scans standing between you and the apps.
Worth saying plainly, because comparison pages that pretend the competitor is rubbish are not useful to anyone deciding between two apps.
Opal is polished. The onboarding is smooth, the sessions and timers are pleasant to use, and the Opal Score gives you a running read on how the week is going. It runs on iPhone, Android and Mac, so if your problem is spread across devices it covers ground Handover does not. Deep Focus, on the harder blocking difficulty, is a genuinely strict mode. And the company is well funded, which shows in the polish and means it is not going to vanish.
If those things matter to you, Opal is a good buy and you can stop reading here.
The price. Opal Pro is $19.99 a month, $99.99 a year, or $399 once. For a tool most people use two or three rules of, that is a lot, and it recurs.
The free tier is one rule. Unlimited rules sit behind Pro, which means the free version is really a trial. Handover's free tier is five rules with no card, which is enough to cover a morning, an evening and a weekend without paying anything.
Blocks you can dismiss. This is the one that actually matters, and it is not unique to Opal. If a block can be turned off in a tap and the tap costs nothing, it stops working within about a week. Opal's answer is a harder difficulty setting that removes the exit. Handover's answer is the opposite: keep the exit, and price it.
| Opal Pro | Handover Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $19.99 | $3.99 |
| Yearly | $99.99 | $29.99 |
| Lifetime | $399 | $79.99 |
| Free tier | 1 rule | 5 rules, no card |
| Platforms | iPhone, Android, Mac | iPhone |
| Family | Teams plan, on request | $49.99 a year for six |
| Blocking by location | Not offered | Yes, 100 to 1,000 m radius |
| Step goal to unlock | Not offered | Yes |
| Barcode scan to unlock | Not offered | Yes |
| Repetitions to unlock | Not offered | Yes, counted by the phone's sensors |
Most blockers, Opal included, are built on the idea that the block should be hard to remove. Push that far enough and you get a lockout, and lockouts get deleted, because nobody tolerates being locked out of their own phone on the evening they genuinely need the thing they blocked.
Handover assumes you will want back in, and charges you for it. Every rule keeps an exit, and every exit has a price: repetitions counted by the phone's own motion sensors, a step goal that cannot be completed sitting down, or a barcode you deliberately left in another room. Break Glass opens one rule after a five minute wait and takes five minutes off your streak. The Emergency Coupon opens everything for an hour and costs twelve days.
The streak is the currency, which is why the price bites. It is not a wall you resent, it is a bill you decide whether to pay, and most evenings you decide it is not worth it.
The rules themselves also attach differently. Alongside schedules and timed sessions, a Handover rule can be tied to a place: apps shut inside a radius you draw on a map, between 100 and 1,000 metres. Arriving is the trigger, so it needs no decision from you at all.
GeoIP blocking. A rule pinned to a location. Draw a circle around the office, the lecture theatre, the gym or your own kitchen, and the listed apps stay shut while you are inside it. Step outside and they work normally.
Step blocking. The way back in is a step goal, walked before the apps open. It cannot be completed sitting on the sofa, which is the entire point.
Barcode blocking. The unlock needs a specific barcode scanned, and you choose which one and where it lives. Leave it in the kitchen, or in the garage, and reaching for Instagram in bed means getting up.
None of these are gimmicks. They work because each one moves the cost of the unlock out of your willpower and into the physical world, at the moment your judgement is worst.
You need Android or Mac. Handover is iPhone only, and will be for a while. Opal covers all three.
You want the analytics. The Opal Score and its history are the best part of the app and Handover has nothing equivalent. Handover shows you your streak and the blocks it held, not a weekly analysis.
You want a total lockout. If what works for you is a block with no exit at all, Opal's harder difficulty does that and Handover deliberately does not.
You are already paying and it is working. Then it is working. Do not switch tools for the sake of it, that is its own form of procrastination.
Handover's free tier is five rules with no card. ScreenZen is free and donation supported. Apple's own Screen Time is free, and worth trying first, but its limits are dismissible in a tap, which is why most people end up looking for something else.
No. Neither app can read the other's setup, and iOS gives no mechanism for it. Rebuilding two or three rules takes about five minutes.
Deleting removes the rules, the same as with any blocker, because iOS lets you delete anything. What survives is the account: your streak, credits and invite code come back when you reinstall, so deleting is not a clean escape from the cost.
The screen addiction page sets out the prevalence figures and what problematic use is associated with, every number sourced. The how to stop scrolling page covers what works before you pay for anything.
The enforcement is identical. Both apps use Apple's Screen Time framework, so blocks hold with the app closed and after a restart. The difference is not strength, it is what happens when you want back in.
If the subscription is what is bothering you, start on the free tier and see whether the priced-exit idea holds for a fortnight before spending anything. Plus is $29.99 a year or $79.99 once, and there is no card required to try it.