If you’re finding your time being frittered away while you use your phone, it’s worth checking to see which apps are absorbing your time. Fortunately, there are apps available that can track app usage and how much time you use on each app. Some can even warn you when you begin spending too much time in one!
Let’s explore the best apps to track your Android apps usage.
Note: these apps will need to run in the background in order to track your app usage. Check out these ways you can stop Android apps from automatically running in the background.
1. YourHour
YourHour is an app specifically designed to tackle phone addiction. It achieves this by monitoring all the apps you use and the number of times you unlock your phone over the course of the day.
When you boot up the app, you can adjust the daily limits for both app usage and unlock counts. Once set, the app will begin tracking how you use your phone over the course of the day.
The usage tracker is great for identifying which apps are draining your daily time. You can also enable a timer that appears when using an app, showing you how much time you’ve spent on it today. When you begin spending too much time on it, the clock turns from green to red.
The unlock counter keeps track of how many times you unlock your phone. If you’ve developed a nasty habit of unlocking your phone when you’re bored, this app will pick up every time you do it.
The app won’t force you to stop using apps or prevent you from unlocking your phone, but it will give you insight into how you use it. As such, you’ll need to apply what you learn from the app to free up your time.
2. StayFree
While YourHour is fantastic at keeping tabs of your overall phone usage, StayFree is the best app for analyzing individual apps. Once installed, it will begin tracking how much time you spend on each app every day, then compile the data it collects into a detailed analysis.
For example, StayFree lets you see how much time you spend in the app every day as well as how many times you boot it up. It will then calculate the daily average time you spend in the app to see if you’re going above or below it. Then – most impressively of all the features – it compares this to the global recorded average to see how you fare against how other people use that app.
You can also see each hour in the day you spent on the app to find hotspots in your daily routine, then compare that to a weekly breakdown to see which days are sucking up your time the most.
3. Screen Time
While it’s a good idea to cut down on some time-consuming apps, there are some that are useful for your productivity. For example, you don’t want an app telling you off for doing work in a word processor.
Screen Time solves this issue by categorizing each app that you have. If you use an app as a tool rather than a time-waster, Screen Time will categorize it accordingly so it doesn’t mess around with your daily screen quota.
After a day has passed, Screen Time shows you a graph of how you used your time. This graph is broken down per category, so if you spent a lot of time in productive apps, the graph will reflect this. As such, this makes Screen Time a good way to identify which apps are truly wasting your time once you remove the beneficial apps from the equation.
Finding Out More About Your Phone
If you’re having issues finding out which apps are sucking up your time, there are apps will help you with that. Whether you want to time each app’s use, compare your usage to the world, or see your tool-to-entertainment balance, it’s easy with an app.
If you don’t want others to know which Android apps you have installed, find out ways to hide your Android apps from snooping eyes.
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