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
DeviceActivityMonitorextension frequently crashes due to memory pressure, often unpredictably. - Even highly optimized implementations struggle to stay within this constraint when using Swift and multiple
ManagedSettingsstores. - 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)
