Screen Time broken on macOS Big Sur? iMac

[4004786]

I enabled screen time on my iMac running macOS Big Sur, and it's been logging constant Twitter usage ever since. For example, it's ~9am and I'm at 9 hours of Twitter usage today on my iMac specifically.

Last night, my iMac was asleep and had a few webpages open in Safari, but none of them were Twitter (they were all from the domain unity.com). It's as if any time Safari is open it is logging Twitter usage.

I don't have any Twitter apps, so the only way I can access Twitter on this computer is through Safari.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone know how of a fix?

Things I've tried:

- Yesterday, I rebooted the iMac to see if that would fix it. It did not fix it (apparently)
- Just now I turned Screen Time off and then back on to see if that fixes it.

It's super odd to me that it's logging usage even when the computer is asleep. That's unexpected, right?

 

[chown33]

Any website that offers a link to share on Twitter will typically have a reference to twitter.com.

For example, look at the upper right of the MacRumors page that shows this thread. The row of little icons includes a Twitter bird. However over that icon and it will show a twitter.com URL. The little icon may also be loaded from twitter.com, as may any number of other resources, such as Javascripts.

Can you narrow down exactly what constitutes "Twitter usage" in the Screen Time log? Is it sending things (PUT or POST), or just getting things? What URL(s) is it using?

 

[4004786]

chown33, I had the same thought as you, so I checked all open pages to see if they make requests to Twitter-owned domains. I couldn't find any.

I also don't know of a way to narrow down Twitter usage in any more granularity to see what macOS is using to determine it as being used.

What's especially odd to me is that screen time counts when the mac is asleep...this AM, all of my open tabs are logged as being used for 10+ hours (at 10am), even though my computer has been asleep the entire time.

 

[chown33]

Off the top of my head, the main way I can think of to narrow things down for Screen Time is to quit apps.

I'd start by quitting Safari before you let the maching sleep for the night. If there's still 10 additional hours of Twitter usage the next morning, then it's a pretty safe bet it wasn't Safari that was producing the count. Unless, of course, there are serious bugs in how Screen Time counts things.

An even better way to start would be to quit every app that's running, other than Finder. Then see what happens overnight. If there's 10 hours of Twitter, or really anything at all, then that makes a bug more likely, in my opinion.

If you can narrow it down to a particular app, say Safari, then try closing all its windows overnite (yes, no windows at all). If you normally use open windows or tabs as a way to return to websites or pages, I recommend adding those URLs to your Bookmarks list (temporarily, in a new folder/list), or paste them into a text-only document in TextEdit. Or use pretty much any way of recording the URL for later revisit.

If Safari with no windows overnight logs 0 hours of Twitter, then open one window and pick a single URL to leave open overnight. You can even test tabs or windows with websites that are known to not have Twitter or Facebook links, such as example.com (an Internet engineering example).

If the chosen single URL logs no Twitter, then add one more overnight. Repeat until something happens.