The Screen Time feature first appeared in iOS 12 to help you monitor your app usage on iPhone and iPad. It’s now on macOS Catalina, with one major flaw: it only shows how long apps are open, not how long you use them.
Fortunately, there are alternatives to Screen Time that are far better at tracking your screen time than Apple’s built-in tool.
The Problem with the Screen Time App in Catalina
In iOS, you cannot have more than two active “focused” apps onscreen at the same time, but that’s not the case on a Mac.
Most people leave apps open in the background on their Mac without even noticing. Do you ever close your browser? Are you listening to music right now via Spotify or Catalina’s iTunes replacement? Are the apps you use for email, notes, or calendar open right now? Which apps are open in the menu bar at the top of your screen?
Screen Time tracks open apps, rather than those currently in use. As a result, it provides no meaningful data about where your time has gone. You can’t see how much of your day you spent typing a report, reading, replying to emails, or browsing Facebook.
Ultimately, this makes Screen Time pretty useless on a Mac if you wanted to use it to boost your productivity. One work-around is to close apps as soon as you’re done with them, but that’s just not how the vast majority of people use their computer. If you want to isolate which apps are sapping your time, you’ll have to find an alternative.
Screen Time Has Parental Controls
With Screen Time, Apple also merged its existing parental controls into a single interface. The options previously available under System Preferences > Parental Controls can now be found in the control panel at System Preferences > Screen Time, instead.
This includes the ability to restrict content based on age ratings, blocking adult websites, and playing multiplayer games via Game Center. You can also define “Downtime” in which apps must be whitelisted to be used. So far, so good.
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