Apple’s Screen Time aims to address growing concerns about device use, mobile phone addiction and the impact of television on mental health. The idea is to help you get back in control, or let you know how much time you’re spending on your devices and what you’re doing on those devices. Whether you’re worried that you’re spending too much time on your phone, want to be more proactive about using your smartphone, or just want to make sure your kids aren’t spending too much time browsing TikTok, Screen Time is the way to go. take care of it.
Here’s everything you need to know about Apple Screen Time, how to use it and what it offers.
What is Apple Screen Time?
Screen Time is a big part of iOS and iPadOS and thus, it works with all programs without developers or programs that need to be modified to take advantage of it.
It’s inside the Settings app and monitors how you use your devices, showing everything from how long you’ve spent on certain apps and apps, to how many times you’ve taken iPhone in a given day or hour.
The collected information can be seen in the supporting charts within the Screen Time menu and at the beginning of the week on Monday morning, you will receive a report via notification to see what you have been doing that week, as it was. compared to the previous week and the amount of time you spent in other apps.
Apple breaks down apps using App Store categories to see if you play a lot of games, or spend time on social media, or if you’re a helpful person.
When the data is taken from the App Store – and all this is reviewed by a person – you should not find that the game is hiding in the category of work, for example, it gives a good indication of how you are using your devices.
Screen Time comes from your iCloud account, which means you’ll be able to see how you use apps on multiple devices by turning on the ‘Share Across Devices’ option in the Screen Time menu.
How to use Screen Time
To view your Screen Time and access all the information collected by the feature, go to the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and click on the Screen Time menu.
From here, you can set App Limits, schedule timeouts, set apps you want to allow at all times, block inappropriate content and set limits based on who you contact. You can also choose to use a Screen Time passcode to allow more screen time when the limit is up – great to use family iPad For example.
To view your Screen Time data, open the Screen Time menu from the Settings app and select ‘View All Activity’. You can select the Weekly and Daily views at the top of the screen, and scroll left to right on the charts to see the activity of previous weeks and days.
Clicking on any of the apps under the ‘Most Used’ menu will give you more information and you can also see more information under the ‘Notifications’ menu and the ‘First Used After Pickup’ menu which you get to if you scroll past Most Used. . We go into more detail about what’s inside Screen Time and how to use it below.
What can you do with Screen Time data?
The idea behind Screen Time data is that by understanding how you’re interacting with your phone or tablet, you can take more control, either by doing drastic things like uninstalling the app entirely, or limiting how much you use it during setup. App Limits.
The problem, of course, is that you have to decide to change. You can choose to ignore Screen Time content or skip it at any time.
How to turn off Screen Time
To turn off Apple Screen Time, go into the Settings app on your device iPhone or iPad and click on Screen Time. Scroll down the menu and you will see ‘Turn off Screen Time’ at the bottom.
Once disabled, your browsing time will no longer be recognized and all limits, time limits and privacy settings will be disabled.
What are App Limits and how do you set them?
App Limits in Screen Time lets you set daily or weekly limits to limit your usage, whether it’s a specific app like Facebook or a whole category of software like Social Media or Games, for example.
To set App Limits, go to the Screen Time menu in the Settings app. Click on ‘Software Limits’ under the daily average chart and select ‘Add Limits’. From here, you can choose to select the entire category, or you can click the arrow on the category to expand the menu to show any apps. To select a group or an individual program, select the box on the left and find ‘Next’.
Then you need to decide how long you want the limit to be – like 30 minutes a day. You can also have different limits on different days by tapping ‘Change Days’. This allows you to choose to limit WhatsApp for one hour a day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and two hours on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, for example.
How do you bypass Screen Time and App Limits?
When the App Limit is about to expire, you will receive a notification telling you that you only have five minutes left. When your time is up, the app’s icon will dim slightly on your home screen and when you open it, you’ll see a white screen with an hourglass and the words ‘Time Limit’. You can choose ‘OK’ to leave the app and do something else with your time.
Alternatively, you can select ‘Ignore Limit’, then you will have four options to choose from: ‘One more minute’, ‘Remind me in 15 minutes’, ‘Ignore Limit For Today’ or ‘Cancel’.
Screen Time App Limits are very similar to Do Not Disturb while running a task. You can choose to remove it, but it makes you think twice.
What is Downtime and how to disable certain programs at certain times?
Timeout is another feature within Apple Screen Time, such as App Limits. Instead of setting time limits on apps or groups of apps like App Limits do, Downtime allows you to schedule when only the apps you choose can run.
This can be used by parents to control which apps their kids access at bedtime, for example, but it can also be used to prevent you from using your work email after hours or social media at work.
To access Downtime, open the Settings app and go to the Screen Time menu. Click on ‘Downtime’ under the daily chart. Then you will need to turn on the time off, select the days you want and select the time, such as 22:00 to 07:00.
Only the apps you’ve chosen to allow and calls will be available when Downtime is enabled. It is possible to clean some applications so that you can still use the phone or messages, for example. To do this, click on ‘Always Allowed’ in the Screen Time menu and click the ‘+’ sign next to the apps you want to allow even if the timeout is enabled.
How to see how many times you have taken your device
Screen Time also shows how much time you spend in contact with your device. Using multiple signatures, apple it measures how many times you pick up your phone or iPad in a given hour. There is an action level to sign up, but I’m looking at how many times you’ve taken it.
To see how many times you’ve held your device, go to the Screen Time menu in the Settings app. Click on ‘View All Actions’ under the Daily Average chart. Scroll down past the ‘Most Used’ section and you’ll come to the Pickups section.
From here, you’ll see a chart with the number of recordings for the day or week (depending on the tab selected above), along with the time of the First Take when in Day view, or the day with the most recordings while in Week view.
To switch between Day and Week views, select Day or Week at the top of the Screen Time menu.
Screen Time is controlled by parents
Although parental controls go a long way to provide more control, Apple does not support multiple users on a single iPhone or iPad device. Screen Time only works using an iCloud account on the device if you have a family iPadthe machine will write all the applications of the program regardless of who will use it.
You can control the apps your kids are using though. Parents can access their child’s Activity Report from their Apple devices to understand where their child spends their time and can manage and set App Limits.
You can also use Downtime to schedule a time limit when your child can use an Apple device, such as bedtime.
Screen Time settings are controlled remotely from the parent’s device, so your kids can’t bypass them or turn them off.