How to Check Time Spent on Apps: a Short Guide
Before diving into the how-tos, I’ll make it crystal clear to you why it’s important to limit screen time and app usage.
Research made by Asana proved that the average professional switches between apps and websites more than 30 times per day. At the same time, the American Psychological Association proved that our productivity drops by 40% when context-switching so much, as our brain and attention are fragmented.
Simper said – you are simply not biologically built to handle so much distraction, and you need to act on it now.
I’ll cut through the noise right off the bat, and I’ll get into solutions.
Check your device’s built-in usage stats
The simplest and cheapest ways to check time spent on apps are to check the built-in tools for tracking app and website usage on your devices.
Every Android, Windows, Mac, and iOS device has such a tracker. Yes, its functionality is minimal, and you won’t get extraordinary data out of these, but it’s the first step towards diminishing screen time.
While the exact process varies between these devices, here’s what you need to do in each device:
On iPhone:
Apple’s Screen Time gives you a detailed breakdown of how much time you spend on each app, but it’s quite limited when considering advanced analytics. These are the steps you should follow:
- Go to: Settings app> Tap “Screen Time”.
- Tap: “See All Activity” to view daily and weekly app usage.
- Insights provided: The “Screen Time” dashboard categorizes apps and provides insights on total time per app, your most-used apps, usage trends, and even how many times you pick up your device.
Limitations:
- This native solution works well for basic tracking, but it lacks deeper analytics that you might need at work.
- Data is typically available only for the past few weeks.
- It lacks export options and team-level tracking.
- Not designed for professional or business analytics needs, but rather for individual needs.
On Android:
Android’s digital wellbeing tools offer similar insights:
- Tap: Digital wellbeing settings & Parental controls
- Tap: “Show Your Data” or “Dashboard” to see time spent on each app.
- Additional features: Set app timers, manage notifications, and view unlocks.
Limitations:
- The data provided is device-specific and often not exportable.
- Limited historical data and no project-level breakdowns.
- It’s not suitable for team or company-wide reporting.
When you open Digital Wellbeing on Android, you are limited to seeing time spent in each listed app and setting timers for specific apps you want to limit. Like iOS, these basic features help with awareness but do not really offer the detailed analytics you need in a professional setup to redesign your workflows.
Check app usage via battery stats
You could also check battery usage stats to get a rough sense of which apps are most active. You need to know that this method is imprecise and doesn’t show the actual time spent on apps.
Here are the steps to do so:
- Go to: Settings > Battery
- Tap: “Show Activity” to see time spent per app over the last 24 hours or 10 days.
Limitations:
- It shows only short-term data.
- It doesn’t have categorization, export, or integration with other tools.
On Mac
- Access Screen Time: Click the Apple menu on your home screen, select System Settings (or System Preferences), and then click Screen Time Widget in the sidebar.
- View usage reports: Under Screen Time, select App & Website Activity to see the daily or weekly summaries of your app usage. You can view usage by individual apps, categories (like Productivity or Social), or across all your Apple devices and family members if you enable Share across devices.
- Customize time periods: Easily switch between daily or weekly views to spot trends.
- Other insights: Screen Time also shows notifications received and how often you pick up your Mac.
Your Mac also has a more detailed real-time monitoring – Activity Monitor (found in Applications > Utilities). Activity Monitor shows all running processes and resource usage, but does not offer you historical time tracking. It’s helpful in seeing what apps are currently active or consuming CPU and memory resources.
On Windows
Windows has embedded a few native ways to check app activity, but they require some setup, so brace yourself with some patience.
- Task Manager app history: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager, then click the App history tab. This shows CPU time and network usage for apps over the past 30 days for the current user. However, it focuses on resource usage rather than detailed time tracking.
- Activity History (Windows 10/11): If you sign in with a Microsoft Account and enable Activity history in Settings > Privacy, Windows tracks your app and service usage, files opened, and websites visited. This data is stored locally and can be synced across devices if permitted.
- Event Viewer and PowerShell Scripts: For advanced users or IT administrators, Windows allows tracking app usage through Event Viewer logs or custom PowerShell scripts that can report running time and resource consumption of specific apps. This method requires technical knowledge and is less user-friendly for everyday professionals.
EARLY provides professional-grade insights across all your devices for all the apps, websites and documents you’re working on.
Use a dedicated time tracking app
If you’re looking to really drill down into your app usage metrics, a comprehensive time tracking tool is the way to go. Such an automated time tracker runs in the background on your devices, meticulously logging how much time you spend on every app and website you use. This is what a time tracker comes with:
- Automatic time tracking: EARLY collects the time you spend working or procrastinating with different apps, projects, websites, or tasks and adds them to your timesheet. All you need to do is check the automatic app list generated, and with a simple tap, turn them into time entries. Here’s how this looks:
- Cross-platform tracking: Monitor app usage across all your devices (mobile and desktop) for a complete picture of your digital time.
- Project-based categorization: Automatically associate app usage with specific projects or clients.
- Detailed time reporting system: Generate comprehensive reports where you can see with granularity how much time you and your team spent using different apps. These reports can also be used for billing, productivity analysis, and personal improvement.
- Integration capabilities: EARLY integrates with 3000+ professional tools, so you can capture everything in your timesheets.
- Privacy-focused design: Maintain control over your data with transparent tracking policies
The professional-grade analytics provided by EARLY transforms your raw app usage data into actionable insights. For instance, you might discover that you spend much more time in communication apps like email and messaging than in your actual production software.
“EARLY has allowed us to work more efficiently. Thanks to the insights, we have been able to make a lot of changes to the IT structure to work more efficiently. This has saved each team member around two hours per week, which is 10 hours gained in total across the team, each week.” Noah Ruseng Bested, IT Support Assistant, Bang & Olufsen
Conclusion
Regardless of the method you choose, don’t just track your time, but act on your time management and on the insights surfaced by the time tracker. Set a strict time limit on distracting apps, batch similar tasks together, and design your digital environment to work for you, not against you. Even a simple 30-minute daily time limit on social media can reclaim a few hours of productive time weekly.