[yjftsjthsd-h]

Okay, not so bad as I initially worried:

> The key is using Screen Time API of iOS.

> After getting approval from the user, the developer can set a flag to deny app removal.

> This feature must be opt-in. To enable the flag, you should explicitly get approval from the user.

[naltroc]

but also, like, it only runs in certain conditions it sounds like here.

Can this line of code be always running? What if the app launches itself as a background process?

For a feature I just learned about so many questions, but it's Apple in their store so hedges betting it isn't as dangerous as it sounds. But perks your ears up

[throwanem]

By design, apps run in background on iOS only as the system permits. Mostly they don't, except for a limited time in response to notifications, and in some other such sharply circumscribed situations.

I strongly doubt an app asserting this flag would pass review without giving the user a way to opt freely back out in the app's settings.

That goes double for the flag being entitlement-gated, one social reason for which requirement would be that it structurally signals a need for closer review. (I don't have an inside source at Apple, but my experience of their review process prompts the inference.)

The intent is to offer a user the option to strengthen a precommitment, not to offer an app dev the option to permanently infest a device. You can play games in app review, but only up to a point. Trying something like that seems like a good way to get deservedly permabanned.

Granted, I still wouldn't use the app, because I don't need it. But if I did, I'd feel pretty OK about enabling that feature. I might expect it to annoy me enough and aid me so little I'd turn it off again, but I'd see no need whatsoever to worry about being stuck with it.

[gordonfish]

What I'm wondering is, why would any app need to actually prevent uninstallation (and thus violate a fundamental right of the user to control their device), when it seems what such app makers would want is to prevent closing the app / escaping to the home screen.

How many people actually decide to uninstall an alarm app as it's going off?

[throwanem]

Presumably enough to make it worth Apple's while to implement the option under an umbrella entitlement over tools that may help support perhaps flagging self-discipline. Presumably too, it was worth the app dev's while to go through the effort and process of implementing the assertion. I have some mild doubts about the fundamental efficacy of such an approach, but its motivation seems clear enough.

For any more than that you're asking quite the wrong person, I'm afraid. For one, I don't intuitively understand the use case; the way this works for me is that I set my phone to play reveille when I need to wake up, and when it does, I do. That makes convenient use of some early training which is all well and good for me personally, but it leaves me little able to speak to the concerns of those for whom nothing so simple can serve.