More flexible Digital Wellbeing settings for limiting time spent in specific apps?


Question

Digital Wellbeing is a feature/app built in to recent Google phones and some phones with Google-licensed Android distributions, but it isn't open source, so unfortunately it doesn't seem like it would be possible to modify it and add new features. I am looking for something a little more powerful, that would allow me to, for example:



  • Group a bunch of social media apps together, and have one time limit per day that covers them all as a group, rather than timing the usage of each individual app separately. For example, instead of limiting myself to 30 minutes on Twitter, 30 minutes on Facebook, and 30 minutes on Reddit, I would like to be able to limit myself to 1.5 hours in total on any "social media" app (the group of apps being definable by me, and I would define it to include Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and perhaps others). So with that "group limit", I would be able to spend, for example, 1 hour on Twitter and 30 minutes on Facebook, but then it wouldn't allow me to use any of those 3 apps for the remainder of the day.

  • Disable the time limits automatically at weekends, and re-enable them at the beginning of the next week

  • Disable all the time limits manually in the evening, but have them re-enabled automatically the following day, in case I forget to do so.


Is there any way I can achieve these goals?


Also, is there any way to also achieve these goals on my Windows PC, in a unified way? Right now I'm just blocking those particular websites on my PC, as a workaround. That means I can only access them on my phone, so I don't have an easy way to get around the time limits I've set up on my phone. But it would be nice to have a time limit that's shared across all of my devices.


Answer

TimeLimit can be used to achieve the first three goals. Steps to follow:



  1. Go into Settings -> Digital Wellbeing and delete all existing time limits, making a note of them as you do so, so you can recreate them below. They will be managed by Timelimit instead, from now on.

  2. Install Timelimit from F-Droid (where it is called Open Timelimit) or Google Play.

  3. Open the Timelimit app

  4. Grant all the permissions requested - except the device management permission, which is optional, and dangerous, because I think it is impossible to unlock your phone if you forget your "parental" password.

  5. Set a password for the "parental" user (which can be just you, or it can be someone else who you trust to set limits on your behalf)

  6. Add apps which you don't want to be time-limited to the "Allowed Apps" category. Be warned that notifications will be limited too - so make sure to add apps which you want to receive notifications at all times from, to this category!

  7. Create a new category, e.g. "Social media".

  8. Add the apps that you want to be in this category

  9. Set a time limit for each day that you want the time limit to apply on, individually. So if you want to limit the apps during week days, you have to create 5 separate limits, one for each day. There is a warning message that warns you that you have to do it this way, but it's easy to skip past it and miss it. The problem is, if you just select all 5 week days, your limit will apply to the whole 5 days, and once it's exceeded, it's exceeded for the whole week!


The "child" user is the user that is restricted, and does not need a password. You can rename that user if you are not a child, by going into it and tapping the gear icon.


If you are asking someone else to manage the time limits on your behalf, perhaps because you don't trust yourself to manage them appropriately, there is currently no option to rename the "parent 1" user, but you can achieve the same effect by creating a new "parent" and then deleting "parent 1".


Topics


2D Engines   3D Engines   9-Patch   Action Bars   Activities   ADB   Advertisements   Analytics   Animations   ANR   AOP   API   APK   APT   Architecture   Audio   Autocomplete   Background Processing   Backward Compatibility   Badges   Bar Codes   Benchmarking   Bitmaps   Bluetooth   Blur Effects   Bread Crumbs   BRMS   Browser Extensions   Build Systems   Bundles   Buttons   Caching   Camera   Canvas   Cards   Carousels   Changelog   Checkboxes   Cloud Storages   Color Analysis   Color Pickers   Colors   Comet/Push   Compass Sensors   Conferences   Content Providers   Continuous Integration   Crash Reports   Credit Cards   Credits   CSV   Curl/Flip   Data Binding   Data Generators   Data Structures   Database   Database Browsers   Date &   Debugging   Decompilers   Deep Links   Dependency Injections   Design   Design Patterns   Dex   Dialogs   Distributed Computing   Distribution Platforms   Download Managers   Drawables   Emoji   Emulators   EPUB   Equalizers &   Event Buses   Exception Handling   Face Recognition   Feedback &   File System   File/Directory   Fingerprint   Floating Action   Fonts   Forms   Fragments   FRP   FSM   Functional Programming   Gamepads   Games   Geocaching   Gestures   GIF   Glow Pad   Gradle Plugins   Graphics   Grid Views   Highlighting   HTML   HTTP Mocking   Icons   IDE   IDE Plugins   Image Croppers   Image Loaders   Image Pickers   Image Processing   Image Views   Instrumentation   Intents   Job Schedulers   JSON   Keyboard   Kotlin   Layouts   Library Demos   List View   List Views   Localization   Location   Lock Patterns   Logcat   Logging   Mails   Maps   Markdown   Mathematics   Maven Plugins   MBaaS   Media   Menus   Messaging   MIME   Mobile Web   Native Image   Navigation   NDK   Networking   NFC   NoSQL   Number Pickers   OAuth   Object Mocking   OCR Engines   OpenGL   ORM   Other Pickers   Parallax List   Parcelables   Particle Systems   Password Inputs   PDF   Permissions   Physics Engines   Platforms   Plugin Frameworks   Preferences   Progress Indicators   ProGuard   Properties   Protocol Buffer   Pull To   Purchases   Push/Pull   QR Codes   Quick Return   Radio Buttons   Range Bars   Ratings   Recycler Views   Resources   REST   Ripple Effects   RSS   Screenshots   Scripting   Scroll Views   SDK   Search Inputs   Security   Sensors   Services   Showcase Views   Signatures   Sliding Panels   Snackbars   SOAP   Social Networks   Spannable   Spinners   Splash Screens   SSH   Static Analysis   Status Bars   Styling   SVG   System   Tags   Task Managers   TDD &   Template Engines   Testing   Testing Tools   Text Formatting   Text Views   Text Watchers   Text-to   Toasts   Toolkits For   Tools   Tooltips   Trainings   TV   Twitter   Updaters   USB   User Stories   Utils   Validation   Video   View Adapters   View Pagers   Views   Watch Face   Wearable Data   Wearables   Weather   Web Tools   Web Views   WebRTC   WebSockets   Wheel Widgets   Wi-Fi   Widgets   Windows   Wizards   XML   XMPP   YAML   ZIP Codes