How to give yourself a break from your Android phone -Gudstory

It can be very easy to spend too much time on your phone, scrolling through social media posts, news updates, video clips, messaging apps, and then scrolling back again. Before you know it, half an hour or more has passed, and you’ve accomplished very little.

If you want to strike a better balance between time spent staring at your phone screen and time spent doing everything else, Android has a tool that can help. It’s called Digital Wellbeing, and like Screen Time for the iPhone, it can tell you about your phone usage and help you set limits on it.

Digital Wellbeing is enabled by default, so when you first open it, you’ll find that it’s already tracking what you’re doing on your phone. It’s available on Android devices from all manufacturers, so whether you’re using a Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, or any other Android phone, you should be able to get it.

To find Digital Wellbeing, open Adjustment and scroll down Digital Wellbeing and Parental Controls, If you’ve set up your kids through Google Family Link, you can use Digital Wellbeing to limit what your kids can do on their devices, but here, we’ll focus on how to do this on your How to use for.

The opening screen of the Digital Wellbeing app shows you how you’ve been using your phone to date, as well as a circle chart showing time spent in each app and how long you’ve been on your phone overall. Below that, you can see how many times you’ve unlocked your phone that day and how many notifications have come through.

• Tap anywhere on the circle chart to see a bar chart showing your today’s stats compared to other days that week, along with a list of recently used apps. that screen is called yours dashboard, You can also access it by selecting Dashboard from the main Digital Wellbeing screen.
• Tap any bar to see a minute-per-app breakdown.
• Swipe left or right on the bar chart to move between weeks. Below the chart, you will see today’s date; You can tap the arrows on the side of the date to scroll from day to day.
• pat down screen time Drop-down menu above the bar chart to switch between screen time, notifications receivedAnd time opened, The bar chart will update to reflect your choice.

Below the bar chart, you’ll find a list of apps sorted by order. depending on what is selected from screen time menu, you’ll see at the top the apps you’ve spent the most time in, the apps with the most notifications, or the apps you’ve opened the most.

From the dashboard, you can set a time limit on a specific app.

• Tap the Egg Timer icon next to the app’s name. If you don’t see the app you want, tap show all apps At the bottom of the list.
• Choose the amount of time you can spend in the app per day. Dialog lets you choose anything from five minutes to 23 hours and 55 minutes, so there’s a lot of flexibility.
• Tap Ok To confirm your choice. The Egg Timer icon by the app changes to show the time range you just set – tap it again to edit or delete the timer.

When you have one minute left before your timer starts and app usage is limited, Android will gray out the display; When your time is up, you will see a message on the screen, and after tapping OkThe app will close.

This isn’t the most effective screen time limiting tool as you can go back to Digital Wellbeing and give yourself more time – but along the way, with a little willpower, you’ll find that it helps your phone usage habits. Can change for the better.

This is for those times when you need to do some serious studying, work, or spending time with family, and you don’t want your phone to interrupt you. It’s basically a more efficient way of setting app limits.

• From the main Digital Wellbeing screen, tap focus mode, You’ll see a list of apps on your phone, with the apps that send the most notifications at the top.
• Select all the apps you want to silence when Focus Mode is active. Not only will alerts from these apps not appear or sound, but you won’t even be able to open these apps.
• Tap turn on now To start a focus mode session immediately or set a schedule Having it turn on automatically at the same time each day.

When focus mode is activated, you’ll see a persistent notification icon in the status bar. Open the notification, and you have the option to turn off Focus Mode or temporarily disable it for five, 10, or 15 minutes.

There’s another feature you can use that helps you take a break from your phone when you especially need it: when you want to get some sleep.

• From the main Digital Wellbeing screen, tap sleep time mode Let your phone gently signal you when it’s time to sleep. It can change the phone display to grayscale, enable “do not disturb” and dim the phone wallpaper.
• You can choose a time to start the bedtime mode or start it manually. Once you’ve been using it for a while, a summary of how well you’re following it also appears here.
• Through customize link, you can set what happens when you sleep and which options (such as grayscale display) you want to enable.

As well as Bedtime Mode, you also have other options visible in Digital Wellbeing that are borrowed from other parts of the Android Settings screen – you can set your phone’s “Do Not Disturb” mode (a more sophisticated version of Focus Mode). Can be configured. For example, as well as control which apps are allowed to send notifications.