[HN Gopher] Show HN: iOS Screen Time from a REST API
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Show HN: iOS Screen Time from a REST API
We're Oliver and Royce and we're the founders of Clearspace. We
build tools to help people reduce their screen time (here's us two
years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35888644) We get
all kinds of requests from users for ways they'd like to use their
screen time data. - "Auto-donate $x to charity every time I exceed
a limit or try to bypass it" - "My 75 Hard group has a screen time
requirement, can we set up group visibility?" - "Let my personal
agent know if it's a good time to tackle things on my todo list" -
"Auto-report large deviations in my screen time to my therapist "
We aren't able to build for all of them, so we're releasing this
API. This is the first time iOS Screen Time is accessible on the
web. Apple doesn't expose it, but since we measure it ourselves, we
can - via UI or API. We're launching this API so developers can
build all these tools and more. Our goal is to enable more
solutions to what we believe is the biggest problem in the world -
the misalignment of human attention and intention in the digital
world. Here's a quick demo of setting up and using the API:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QahETj3xaaIsn0JiNbuqvTaSLdx...
Author : anteloper
Score : 68 points
Date : 2025-06-05 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thescreentimenetwork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thescreentimenetwork.com)
| noleary wrote:
| Can you extend access to everyone with the link?
| anteloper wrote:
| As in allow everyone with a link to programatically retrieve
| your screen time data? You can't limit by link at the moment
| but you can go public and allow _anyone_ to programatically
| access your screen time data.
|
| thescreentimenetwork.com is effectively a list of people doing
| just that. Does that answer your question?
| noleary wrote:
| no I just meant the google drive link :)
|
| it says 'access denied' for me
| anteloper wrote:
| fixed
| alexdanilowicz wrote:
| As someone who currently "bricks" his phone and has gamified it a
| bit by sharing my stats with my brother-in-law who also does
| that, this is cool. I do think "not spending time on your phone"
| needs to be celebrated more.
|
| P.S. "bricks" meaning a very strict screentime set up, only
| basically phone + text is available M-F
| crossman wrote:
| I'd love to hear more about how you gamified it what your
| process is
| roycebranning wrote:
| someone lmk me when they've built the "venmo my friend when I go
| over 7 hrs in a day" service...i'll sign up immediately
| busymom0 wrote:
| Not exactly the same but my app requires you to exercise (climb
| stairs/bike/cardio etc) to gain screen time points:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/run-for-fun-screen-time-focus/...
| roycebranning wrote:
| oh nice - i use the Clearspace step to scroll or pushup to
| scroll challenges for this:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearspace-reduce-screen-
| time/...
| sneak wrote:
| This is awesome, and it doesn't surveil users either! A+!
| sneak wrote:
| I am not giving some random startup an API permission to make
| unsupervised payments on my behalf.
| jdamon96 wrote:
| This looks great, excited to try it out
| mikaoj85 wrote:
| The webpage is not very usable on my iOS screen, is that on
| purpose?
| anteloper wrote:
| Whoops, fixed thanks.
| preshdkumar wrote:
| love this idea a lot
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Could you just clarify how the data from someone's device gets to
| this API? Do they have to install something?
| anteloper wrote:
| Yes - the Clearspace app.
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearspace-reduce-screen-time/...
|
| Would recommend creating an account in the API docs first
| because that way when you log into Clearspace you'll get an
| onboarding for API setup rather than general setup of the app
|
| Maybe other apps in future will report data to the API as well
| beggi wrote:
| Very cool! Are there plans to make it possible to restrict apps
| via rest API as well?
| anteloper wrote:
| Yes if there's interest we'll add API functionality for
|
| - lock/unlock apps
|
| - exclude some apps from total screen time calculation
|
| - get data about specific app usage
| batesy wrote:
| So cool. How does it work?
| anteloper wrote:
| 1. You create an account
|
| 2. Log in with that account to the Clearspace app which uses
| on-device permission to report your data to the API
|
| 3. Use API key associated with that account to fetch your data
| or be notified about changes to it
|
| Does that answer?
| batesy wrote:
| Yep. I love this, but does it require using the Cleaspace app
| / having a paid subscription?
| anteloper wrote:
| > Does it require paid subscription
|
| No
|
| > Does it require using clearspace
|
| Yes in the sense that it needs to downloaded and logged in
| on your phone. No in the sense that you don't have to open
| it or use it after setup
| batesy wrote:
| Excellent. Thanks for this!
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Hi, thanks for that interesting tool. Totally unrelated question:
| I love the UI, did you use a public css framework/theme?
| anteloper wrote:
| Tailwind but not a publicly available theme
| drag0s wrote:
| I love this! I think it would be even better to have a React
| Native SDK available and the ability to lock/unlock screen time
| via the API.
| navs wrote:
| This is amazing. I've been measuring my mental wellbeing through
| different data points. Currently manually importing my apple
| health data into a Jupyter notebook and measuring against my
| journal sentiment, finances and whatever I can gain access to.
| This would be another interesting data point.
| anteloper wrote:
| Very cool. Are you able to get sleep data in there?
| navs wrote:
| I can but the raw data is very noisy. I'm still working my
| way through it. I'll likely share this in a blog series or
| via Deepnote/Hex.tech
| abletonlive wrote:
| This is a really cool concept but I unfortunately care too much
| about privacy to use you as the handler of all of my screen time
| data. I know that's partially why y'all mention that it's not for
| everybody but I would like to just say it is cool nonetheless!
| codethief wrote:
| Unrelated to the REST API, I just installed your Clearspace app
| on my Android phone (Pixel 8 W/ GrapheneOS). I can't use the app
| without connecting it to my Google account _and_ the app requires
| network permissions? (There are so many others on the Play Store
| that will sell your app usage data.) Sorry, but no.
| anteloper wrote:
| Understandable, but yes we need auth and would rather use third
| party (google) for that, all things considered. And yes we need
| the network.
|
| We don't sell your usage data.
| sneak wrote:
| Forcing users to have adtech surveillance platform accounts
| (and agree to TOS of same) to use your app isn't a good look.
| awaseem wrote:
| Wait is this just a proxy through to the clearspace app? Cool
| concept, might add this to Foqos (open source restrictions app).
| Is your API open source?
| anteloper wrote:
| Clearspace is the only data source right now yes. Would love to
| have other options feeding in. Does Foqos measure total screen
| time on iOS?
| kovek wrote:
| This is great! I am really interested in trying this out. Also, I
| am wondering, are there solutions similar to this but on MacOS?
| anteloper wrote:
| For retrieving Mac OS screen time programatically? Not that I'm
| aware of.
|
| In any Apple device, In settings -> Screen Time there's an
| option for "share across devices". If that is turned on, all
| devices will report your cumulative totals. So if you're
| interested in retrieving your screen time from _all_ your
| devices, you can turn that on and then your iPhone will report
| everything, which you could retrieve with this API. But you
| wouldn 't be able to differentiate where the screen time came
| from.
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