You often spend the majority of your time on apps and programs on your computer or phone, whether you’re using it for web browsing, social media scrolling, email checking, or gaming. However, have you ever pondered which apps you use most frequently?
If you want to balance work and play, it can help to know which apps take up the most of your time. You may discover, for example, that you’re using social media more than you had planned to, which may be taking time away from other crucial objectives. Conversely, you may find that you aren’t making as much use of your preferred productivity software as you could, which presents a chance to enhance your work management skills. If you want to control how much time you spend on screens, it’s important to recognize these trends.
Thankfully, there are built-in tools and features to monitor app activity on contemporary PCs and smartphones. To help you take charge of your digital life, we’ll explain how to check app usage on Android, iPhone, Windows, and Mac in this post
How to monitor Android app usage
Digital Wellbeing is a feature on Android phones that gives you information about how you use your phone, including how much time you spend on different apps. If your phone has a custom Android skin installed, the instructions to access this data may change significantly. Here’s how to monitor app usage on stock Android smartphones.
To access Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls, launch the Settings app and scroll down.
Tap the circle that shows how much time you spend on screens each day.
A list of apps and the amount of time you’ve spent using them may be seen in the Activity details menu. To see app usage for earlier days, you can alter the date.
To view your usage by hour, tap on any app. From this option, you can also establish a daily usage cap for apps.
Digital Wellbeing may still be used to track app activity on a Samsung Galaxy phone, but the procedures are a little different:
Tap Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls after launching the Settings app.
Press the “Most used apps” section now.
Under app use, tap the View all option.
A list of apps and their usage should appear in the Screen Time menu.
To see how often an app has been used during the last week, tap on its name.
You may add the Digital Wellbeing’s screen time widget to your Android home screen to conveniently monitor how much time you spend using your apps. By doing this, you won’t have to go through the menus to see your top three apps.
How to monitor iPhone app usage
The Screen Time function on iPhones allows you to see how much time you spend on specific apps and even websites. Here’s how:
Get your iPhone’s Settings app open.
Tap on Screen Time after scrolling down.
To obtain comprehensive app and website usage data, tap on See All Apps & Website Activity.
The Most Used part of this menu shows you which apps you’ve used the most and how much time you’ve spent on each.
To view app activity throughout the past week or on particular days in the past, you can easily change the date range.
To view a breakdown of your daily consumption, tap on any app in the list.
Keep in mind that Screen Time will automatically display usage data for all of your devices if you use the same Apple ID on multiple Apple devices. Tap the Devices option in the upper-right corner, then choose your iPhone to get app usage information for that particular model.
For easy access to your app usage statistics, you may add the Screen Time widget to your iPhone’s home screen, just like you do with Android. You can easily keep an eye on and reduce your iPhone usage with this.
How to monitor Mac program usage
Like iOS, Apple’s macOS has a feature called Screen Time that lets you see how much time you spend using various Mac apps. To check it, follow these steps:
To access System Settings on your Mac, click the Apple menu located in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Click on the Screen Time tab after navigating down the left sidebar of the System Settings window. To monitor consumption, you might need to activate Screen Time if it isn’t already.
When you select the App & Website Activity option, a list of apps should appear, ranked from most to least used.
Use the date choices above the graph to see the usage of the app for a particular day.
Hover your mouse pointer over an app in the Limits column and click the hourglass icon that shows to establish a limit if you think you’re using it for too long. Additionally, you can view consumption data for several devices via the drop-down option in the top-right area if you’re using the same Apple ID across them.
How to monitor Windows app usage
Windows lacks an easy-to-use method for monitoring your app activity, in contrast to Mac. The best way to find out how long apps were running in the foreground and how much power was used is to go to Settings > System > Power & battery > power use. This approach does not offer comprehensive, time-based app usage information, but it does assist in identifying battery-draining apps.
You can use a third-party tool like Digital Wellbeing for Windows if you want a more dependable method of monitoring your app activity. Download the Digital Wellbeing installer from GitHub’s website to get started. Double-clicking the installer file after it has finished downloading will launch it and install the application on your computer. The application will launch automatically, but in order for it to work correctly, you must restart your computer.
Click the Digital Wellbeing app icon in the system tray in the lower-right corner of your screen to launch it after restarting. To start the app, right-click the icon and choose Open. You can get comprehensive usage data, including how much time is spent on each app, within the app. You should enable the Run at startup option in the app’s settings for precise tracking. This will guarantee that the application starts up automatically every time your computer boots up.