Many people are familiar with the situation: you go to check the work chat and suddenly get lost in a stream of news, messages, photos. To avoid this, you can use time control apps. Here are seven free time trackers that will show you how much time you’re spending on social networks and limit distracting apps.
MyAddictometer
A time trackers that is as simple as the best sportsbook online analyzes the total time you spent on your phone without tagging specific apps.
Once installed, the home screen opens with a timer and three icons. “Usage Trends” shows how often you’ve unlocked the device and how many hours you’ve spent on it. “Analysis” shows comparative graphs for a week and three days, and “Time Scale” marks all the intervals in which you’ve used the gadget. Reports can be exported in table format to any messenger, email, or saved to your phone.
Menthal
This app will determine which services you spend the most time on and how often you access them.
The tracker can estimate how often you open the application and what actions you perform there. Before you start, you can fill out a questionnaire of 20 questions. They relate to your well-being, life satisfaction, and interests. Then the app will start to analyze your behavior and give you a detailed report after two days. Thanks to this data, you can understand what you really do on your phone and how much time it takes.
Menthal doesn’t block apps or send reminders. Only the notification bar on the lock screen will tell you how many hours a day you spent on your phone. In separate tabs in the tracker, you can see how much time you spend on different services, in what order you open them, and how much in total you sit on your phone each day.
SPACE
Before you start the tracker for the first time, you need to answer the questions how often you use your phone and for what purposes. Based on this questionnaire, the program will give you an approximate plan for using your device. The tracker itself will determine how many times a day you should unlock your phone and how many hours you should spend in it. All the data will be shown in the notification bar.
You can also take a more detailed questionnaire that will determine your user type. However, the app settings are very flexible and you can adjust them to suit you. You can track your weekly or monthly progress in the tracker and get tips on how to use your gadgets sustainably.
Forest
Time tracker that helps you focus on work. Here you will have a game motivation not to go to social networks. The user has to grow a tree, but it’s possible to do this only if you don’t go to other apps. If you open a third-party service while the time tracker is running, the tree dies.
The tracker functions in two modes: timer and stopwatch. In the first case, you measure yourself a period of time in which you should not be distracted, such as 30 minutes. If you have not touched the phone during this time, the plant will get stronger. There is no time target in stopwatch mode. Depending on how much time you spend without a gadget, a certain number of trees will grow.
There are captions next to the image of the growing tree. They should encourage you to close your smartphone screen and dive back into your work. But sometimes they can sound pretty rude, like “Stop coming in here!” or “Leave me alone!” You can see on the graph how many hours a day you were focused on work, and look at the patch of trees that grew while you weren’t distracted by gadgets.
Toggl
This time trackers lets you track how much time you spend on specific work tasks.
There are two modes in the app. The first looks like a list of tasks without a specific time frame. Thanks to it you will understand how much time you need for one or another task. The second mode is the “Tomato Method”. You write the name of the task, and the countdown starts for 25 minutes, and then the timer counts down a 5 minute break. And so on until you finish the task. Then you can see how long you’ve been doing your work on different days in the “Calendar” and “Reports” tabs.
Flipd
Time trackers that radically solves the problem of procrastination in social networks and simply locks your phone for a certain time.
You set the task and time, press start and you can no longer unlock your device. The only exceptions are apps that you can put on the White List. But there are no social networks, only phone, calculator, calendar, notes. The tracker has a set of background music for comfort. You can turn on the noise of the library, a cafe or the sounds of nature.
You can lower the notification curtain, but you can’t click on alerts. If something urgent happens, the smartphone will have to restart to access messengers or social networks.
The tracker can also be used in simpler modes, for example, as a stopwatch to work by the “tomato” method or a regular timer.
QualityTime
In this time tracker, you can track the total time spent on your phone and the time in each specific app. You can also see the chronology of app usage for the day and the number of times they have been run.
An unusual feature is the “Break” feature. It’s not so much for concentrating on your work as it’s for taking a break from your phone. You create a theme, such as “Meet the family.” Then you mark the duration of the event and choose apps that you can still go to if necessary, and block notifications or calls. After that, you won’t be able to access any other services until the allotted time is up.
