Your phone is part of your day. Now it is part of your Gyroscope history too. Phone Time brings yesterday’s total, hourly pattern, pickups, notifications and app-by-app usage into the same morning briefing as sleep, steps, mood and computer time.
The point is not to turn screen time into another score. It is to make the tradeoffs visible: what the phone helped you do, what became an hour without you noticing, and what that time may have replaced.
The whole digital day, in one place
Phone Time shows when you used the phone, not just how long. Five minutes of maps, a long call with family and an hour in a social feed should not be treated as the same thing, so the report keeps the app breakdown beside the total.
- Yesterday’s total and an hour-by-hour timeline
- Pickups, notifications and minutes per app
- A private preview before anything is saved
- App Trends, Weekly Reviews and coaching context over time
Why the total can be hard to feel
Digital time arrives in fragments: a notification here, a quick check there, one more refresh before bed. Each moment feels small while the sum can be surprisingly large. These two views turn a daily average into something easier to reason about.
Import it with one tap
Apple requires permission before Screen Time can be read, so Gyroscope cannot silently import it in the background. From the morning briefing or yesterday’s Mind tab, tap Import your phone time. You will see a private preview first, and can save it to your account or close it without keeping anything.
Run one useful experiment
The data becomes useful when it answers a small question. Pick one change for a week, then compare Phone Time with the outcome you care about.
For sleep
Start with the final hour rather than the daily total. Move the phone away for 30 minutes before bed and compare bedtime, duration and Sleep Score with the previous week. A small randomized pilot trial found improvements in sleep onset, duration and reported sleep quality when participants avoided phones for 30 minutes before bed. It was not a universal prescription; it is a reasonable question to test in your own data.
For focus
Leave the phone in another room for one important work block. Watch pickups and notifications, then look at the same hours in computer time. In two 2017 experiments, working-memory and reasoning performance was strongest when participants’ phones were in another room, though later research suggests the effect is not identical for everyone.
For mood or movement
Limit only the app taking the most unplanned time, or reclaim one predictable block for a walk, training or cooking. Starting with one app and one replacement makes the result easier to interpret than a broad “digital detox.”
One day becomes a trend
The morning card explains yesterday. Every app can also become its own Trend, and the Weekly Review combines phone and computer time so the report reflects your whole digital day. Monthly reports establish a longer baseline, while your coach can look at the same pattern beside sleep, mood, movement and food.
Set it up tomorrow morning
Update to the latest version of Gyroscope, open your morning briefing, and tap Import your phone time. After a week, open Mind to see the average, the apps behind it and whether the experiment you chose made a difference.