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Champ vs Opal

Opal is built around scheduled focus sessions and detailed usage analytics. Champ is built around the individual moment you reach for an app — it interrupts that open, offers a 30-second reset, and rewards the choice in a garden. Pick Opal if you want structured blocks of protected time; pick Champ if your problem is the reflex rather than the calendar.

Opal's features last checked . Apps change — if something here is out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.

How Opal works

Opal centres on focus sessions: you schedule blocks of time, choose which apps are blocked during them, and Opal enforces the block. It layers on detailed analytics — a focus score, session history, and breakdowns of where time went.

The model assumes you know in advance when you need protecting, and it is very good at that. Scheduled deep-work blocks are its home ground.

How Champ works

Champ does not start from the calendar. It starts from the reach — the unplanned open at 11pm, in a queue, mid-task. The shield fires on the app open itself, and what you get is not a locked door but a 30-second reset: a breath cycle, an affirmation, a short meditation or a visualisation.

Champ also deliberately shows less data. There is no usage dashboard, partly because a weekly report of your failures is a poor motivator, and partly because Apple’s Screen Time data never leaves the device to begin with.

Side by side

Feature comparison between Champ and Opal
 ChampOpal
Core mechanicIntercepts the app open, offers a 30-second resetScheduled focus sessions that block a set of apps
Best forUnplanned, reflexive picking-upPlanned deep-work blocks
What you get instead of the appA guided reset — breathing, affirmation, meditation or visualisationA block screen
AnalyticsMinimal by design; usage data stays on-deviceDetailed — focus score, session history, trends
Progress modelA garden that grows from resets you completedFocus score and streaks
PlatformiPhone and iPadiPhone, with a wider platform range

Choose Opal if…

Choose Opal if you want rich analytics and your day already has a shape — scheduled blocks you want defended. Its reporting is genuinely more detailed than ours, and if seeing the numbers is what motivates you, Champ will feel thin.

Choose Champ if…

Choose Champ if the problem is not your schedule but your thumb, and if you want the blocked moment to become something — a breath, a line, thirty seconds — rather than a wall.

Champ's free tier is enough to find out which camp you're in.

Get Champ — free

Questions

Is Champ a direct replacement for Opal?

Not quite. They solve adjacent problems: Opal defends planned time, Champ interrupts unplanned reaches. People who want detailed focus analytics will prefer Opal.

Can I use both?

On iOS, multiple apps can hold Screen Time authorisation, but running two shielding apps over the same apps tends to produce confusing double-prompts. Pick one for a given app.

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