Screen Time discrepancy between DeviceActivityMonitor and DeviceActivityReport

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Created Dec ’22

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My app monitors DeviceActivityEvents with no categories, apps, or websites selected because we want to monitor their time spent on all categories, apps, and websites. This is because my app gives users rewards for keeping their total Screen Time low.

Unfortunately, it has been seemingly impossible to align the Screen Time shown with DeviceActivityReport to the Screen Time monitored with DeviceActivityMonitor. By default, the DeviceActivityReport captures more Screen Time than the DeviceActivityMonitor by default. But if I try to filter the report by totalActivityDuration on each category, it misses some Screen Time captured by the monitor (like FaceTime, for instance).

I simply want to report to the user exactly the Screen Time I am monitoring by default with DeviceActivityMonitor. Is that possible without selecting any categories, apps, or websites in the monitor?

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Answer 1

Frameworks Engineer OP

Apple

Dec ’22

Yes, the totalActivityDuration for each reported activity segment includes screen time where no apps or websites are used (e.g. the time spent on the Home Screen), whereas Device Activity is only monitored for actively used apps and websites, which is expected behavior. However, please file a bug report using Feedback Assistant for the discrepancy you are seeing between the sum of each category's totalActivityDuration and the time monitored for an event that includes all apps, websites, and categories.

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Answer 2

charleswinston OP

Dec ’22

Thank you for your reply, and for all your replies on my questions on the DeviceActivity Framework! I've filed https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/11901286.

But do you have any information about apps or websites that do not fall under a specific category, but are still monitored by DeviceActivityMonitor by default (without selecting any categories, apps, or websites). I am particularly suspicious of FaceTime, which does not show up anywhere in a breakdown inside iOS' native Screen Time app, but does add to total Screen Time reported. Settings and Safari also appear to have non-typical behavior like this. Can you provide any knowledge you have about these apps that do not appear under a specific category, and how they behave under the DeviceActivity Framework?

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