Screen Time by Location — Support

Screen Time by Location shows where your screen time actually happens. It quietly notices the places you go, names them for you using Apple's map data, and lays your phone usage over that timeline. You never tag a location, name a place, or confirm anything. The app has no account, no sync, and no ads.

Getting Started

• Allow location access — Choose Always. Visits are detected while the app is closed, so anything less means places will not be found.
• Allow Screen Time access — This is Apple's own permission screen for usage data.
• Choose what to count — Tap Select All, then Done, to measure your whole day. This step exists because Apple requires an explicit choice of what may be counted.
• Then leave it alone — Carry your phone as usual. Places appear on their own over the following days, already named.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why don't I see any places yet?

A spot only becomes a place once you have been there on three separate occasions, including at least one visit of ten minutes or more. That threshold is what stops red lights, parking spots and drive-bys from filling the app with junk. Give it a few days of ordinary movement. You can lower both numbers under Settings, Sensitivity.

How does it know a place is called "Starbucks" without me telling it?

It tries four things in order and keeps the first that works. Home and Work are worked out purely from your own pattern — where the phone spends its nights, and where it spends weekday working hours. For anywhere else, it asks Apple's map data what business sits at that spot. If nothing is listed, it falls back to the street or neighbourhood name. If even that fails, it uses a placeholder like "Place #4" and quietly upgrades it the next time you visit with a connection.

A place got the wrong name. Can I fix it?

Yes, and it is entirely optional — a place works from the moment it appears. Open the Places tab and tap it to rename it. If the same spot was detected twice under different names, open one and choose Merge to fold it into the other. Once you rename a place yourself, the automatic Home and Work naming will not overwrite it.

Why don't the per-place minutes add up to my total screen time?

For two honest reasons. First, iOS does not hand third-party apps a running total of your usage, so the app measures it in steps — it learns the moment your cumulative usage crossed each five-minute mark, and shares those minutes across wherever you were in between. That rounds. Second, time spent travelling between places is deliberately left out rather than pinned on whichever place happened to be nearest. The exact figure from Apple is shown at the bottom of the Today tab so you can always see the difference.

Why does the app need Always location? That sounds like a lot.

Because a visit that only counts while the app is open in front of you is not a visit worth recording. Detection has to run in the background or the whole idea does not work. It uses Apple's visit monitoring, which is designed for exactly this and is far lighter on the battery than continuous tracking. None of it leaves your phone.

Will this drain my battery?

It should not be noticeable. The app does not track you continuously or keep GPS running. It relies on the low-power visit and significant-location services built into iOS, which wake it only when you actually arrive somewhere or leave.

Does it know which apps I was using?

No, and it cannot. Apple only lets an app see the exact per-app breakdown inside a sealed component that is forbidden from passing anything back out. What this app works with is total usage, joined to place. Which apps you used is not something it can read or store.

Can I use this to monitor someone else's phone?

No. This is a personal-insight tool for your own device only. It uses the individual Screen Time permission, not the parental-control one, so there is nothing to set up for another person's phone.

Is the app free?

Yes. No subscription, no in-app purchase, no paywall, no advertising.

What happens if I delete the app?

Everything goes with it. Your places, your visits and your usage history live only on your device, and there is no backup on our side because nothing is ever sent to us. You can also wipe everything at any time with Reset All Data in Settings.

Does it work without an internet connection?

Almost entirely. Detecting visits, recognising places you already know, and measuring screen time are all fully offline. The one exception is the single map lookup used to name a brand-new place. Offline, that place gets a placeholder name and is renamed automatically later.

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