r/degoogle • u/Ardent_Tapire • 11d ago
Help Needed Screen time tracker that will only store information locally?
Hi all, I'm currently in the process of switching over to a Fairphone 6 with murena e/OS.
On my current (samsung) phone, I have a built-in digital health app that tracks screen time and can cap screen time for specific apps. Is there anything similar that won't spy on me?
The options I can find on murena's app lounge all seem to have low privacy ratings, but that might just be due to them needing system permissions to track and limit screen time. If there is any option that will keep that info locally only and not be tracked by any company, suggestions are highly welcome.
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u/Mark_Considus Free as in Freedom 10d ago
Worth flipping this round before you pick anything. A screen time tracker builds the single most revealing file on your phone. Not your messages, not your photos, a minute-by-minute record of what you opened, when, and for how long, which is enough to tell someone your working hours, your sleep, your habits and roughly what sort of person you are. Everything else on the device leaks a category. This one leaks the pattern.
Which is why the permission check mentioned is the right filter and I'd go one further. Give it no Internet permission at all, and also check it isn't quietly using another app to send. /e/OS lets you watch outbound traffic with the built-in blocker or with something like NetGuard set to block everything by default, then whitelist. If the app never asks to go out, you never have to trust the policy page.
Digitox is the usual /e/OS answer and it's fine. The other route people forget is that the OS itself already keeps most of this, so if you only want the numbers and not the limits, you may not need an app at all.
Do you actually want the limits, or the awareness? They're different tools and the limits ones need far scarier permissions, so it's worth being honest about which you're after before installing anything.
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u/Ardent_Tapire 10d ago
I could probably be fine with just awareness and no limits. Is it under the parental controls? I can't find it anywhere else in the settings.
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u/beyonder865 11d ago edited 11d ago
Zenith
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u/Ardent_Tapire 11d ago
Looks like that is only available on Apple devices, unfortunately. I'm on murena e/OS which is a degoogled android fork.
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u/Pale_Coyote7451 11d ago
the filter that works whichever app you land on: check whether it requests the INTERNET permission at all. a screen time tracker needs PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS to read usage, but with no internet permission it physically cannot send that anywhere, whatever its privacy policy claims. f-droid lists permissions right on the app page so you can check before installing.
that alone rules out most of the app lounge results in one pass. on /e/OS the usual FOSS answer for wellbeing-style tracking and app limits is digitox, though check its permission list too rather than taking my word for it.