Android: Google is developing a super practical widget copied from iOS


Google is working on a new widget for Android inspired by one of the functions that Apple has integrated into iOS for several years. This is Screen Time, also called Screen Time. This creates a periodic report on the use of the smartphone. This new widget would be integrated into the Digital Wellbeing toolkit.

Credit: 9to5Google

Digital Wellbeing, called “Bien-être numérique” in French, is a toolkit launched in 2018 and developed to integrate digital smarter into our daily lives. Accessible via the Settings menu Android, it allows you to finely manage the number of notifications you receive, the periods when you need to concentrate or rest, as well as an indicator of the most used applications. You can also set a limit for each application.

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This last part is still quite undeveloped and not so practical. Android allows to display the usage time of an application, whether the screen is on or not, as well as a histogram with the daily usage time. The same data exists for the number of activations and the number of notifications. But you don’t have no cumulative data over the week or on a special category. There are also no hour-by-hour details. And above all, access to this information is exclusively through the phone’s settings menu. The experience is therefore less convenient if you compare to that of Screen Time that arrived with iOS 12

Google is working on a widget inspired by Screen Time on iOS

Indeed, Screen Time is more practical, Google does not intend to admit defeat. The firm is preparing new functions for digital well-being, including a widget to display smartphone usage time. This is what our colleagues from 9to5Google discovered in the source code of the version 1.0.426751293 from the beta of the application Digital Wellbeing (which updates via the Play Store). A function that seems very inspired by what Apple offers.

This widget, of which you can discover the first images above, would have several sizes, displaying different information depending on the space allocated to it. Also, the size of the bubbles would change depending on how long an app is active. Of course, the design would be based on the guidelines of MaterialYou of Android 12, with adaptive colors. The widget would display circles proportional to the usage time of the apps. According to 9to5google, this would not be a widget exclusive to Google Pixel. All Android smartphones should therefore benefit from it.

Screen Time on iOS: a real dashboard on the use of the iPhone and applications

On iOS, Apple has developed a more comprehensive equivalent service. Called Screen Time (or Screen Time), this system offers a true dashboard daily, weekly and even hourly. Screen Time of course includes usage time, as well as the number of activations and the number of notifications. And the dashboard can also concatenate data by categories. Netflix alone doesn’t necessarily mean much. But if you add Prime Video and Disney+, the screen stat is more interesting. Finally, iOS offers a short weekly report, with the evolution of the activation time, and a very practical widget.

Source: 9to5Google



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