Developer conference season is coming to an end with Apple’s WWDC this week, and the main takeaway is that between Google’s “Digital Wellbeing” and Apple’s “Screen Time”, the two biggest smartphone developers are taking some time to discourage smartphone overuse.
On the surface, the two companies are taking very similar approaches with the tools they’re offering to present information to users. Apple and Google are both adding new dashboards, with options for more zoomed-out perspectives on how you’re spending your time, along with more granular views of how often you’re using individual apps – down to the minute. There’s data on how many notifications you’ve received, where they’re coming from, and breakdowns of when you’re actually on your phone.
I like these features. I don’t really need them – I don’t even use my phone all that much – but I do like that they give me insight into how long I use certain applications, how often I pick up my phone, and so on. Neat data to have.
Part of what makes phones so distracting are the calls and notifications, but the do not disturb mode on iOS/Android is an all or nothing kind of thing. In other words, I can allow contacts to ring through, but what if I’m watching a movie, taking a nap, or whatever else, and don’t want to be disturbed unless it’s really important?
Thus, I want to see these smartphones get smart enough to have a do not disturb mode that reveals to my contacts that, ‘I’m here if you need me and it’s urgent, but otherwise, piss off’. That way, I can go completely off the grid whenever I want, without feeling like I might be alienating someone I care about, who might try and reach out to me in an emergency.
Edited 2018-06-06 17:31 UTC
I’d actually like to whip up a similar data-gathering tool for my desktop once my more pressing stuff is out of the way.
I figure that I should be able to get some really good data by experimenting with processing logs after the fact if I log the following:
1. The idle counter from X11’s XSCREENSAVER extension
2. Timestamped changes to the active window or its title
3. What and whether an MPRIS application is playing (eg. Audacious)
4. What and whether MPV is playing (may require wrapper/extension)
5. What and whether media is playing in browser windows (via extension)
6. Logging scroll wheel input on unfocused windows
#1 would be useful for selectively ignoring AFK time. (Selectively, because I’m technically AFK when I give exclusive attention to playing media.)
#2 combined with “saved search”-esque keyword filtering would allow me to do things like drawing time-allocation donut or sunburst charts with categories like “Fanfiction”, “Videos”, “Coding”, etc.
#3 through #5 would be useful for learning more about when I split my attention and whether I need to be more careful about it.
(A not-ideal but more generally useful way to accomplish #5 would be an extension which watches the browser’s built-in “tab is playing audio” indications and, if any tabs are playing audio, uses titlePreface to prepend something like “â–¶” to the window title.)
#6 would be used to account for things like reading a page without returning focus to the window first. (I have a triple-monitor desktop.)
Edited 2018-06-06 18:45 UTC
…oh, and Joystick/Gamepad input.
Bit of a sad irony I forgot to mention that until the following day, despite having spent so much energy trying to find a way to integrate it into X11’s idle tracking to get automatic screensaver suppression in games.
Edited 2018-06-07 16:23 UTC