# How I track iOS screentime automatically **URL:** \ **Category:** Tech\ **Created:** [October 14, 2025, 11:23am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555 "2025-10-14T11:23:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gmzamz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gmzamz](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/gmzamz)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2025, 11:23am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/1 "2025-10-14T11:23:55Z")
1. Download [Jomo](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jomo-screen-time-blocker/id1609960918), link with screentime, do the minimum (or more!) setup 1. Technically any app that exposes a ‘get screentime’ shortcut will work. Opal has one too. You’ll just need to edit the shortcut 2. Jomo recommends you uncheck ‘share screentime across devices’. I personally don’t since I want aggregated metrics 2. Download [this](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/32d6dbd2a77940ce964dd3e9e4c45875) shortcut 1. replace the user, slug, and auth\_token text as necessary 3. Create an automation in shortcuts that will run fairly often and set it to run the above shortcut 1. This could be a time scheduled run or linked to opening an app you use semi-frequently (beeminder!, safari, reddit, etc) 4. Create your ‘do-less’ beeminder goal 1. Change to timey goal 2. mark as api to prevent _cheating_ 3. disable PPR 4. change to custom goal 1. change aggday to ‘last’ - you’ll have a ton of data coming in depending on how you automated it. 2. uncheck plot all - again, ton of data TADA🎉 Jury is still out on how well this will work long term. Shortcuts can be finicky and apple is persnickity about exporting usage data like this (understandably). I still haven’t found a way to export per-app/per-site/per-content data either, which is my next goal. Might need to do some sort of break and inspect proxy/vpn for that. Anywho hope you enjoy : ) ---
**Author:** ![skorytnicki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/skorytnicki/32/4204_2.png) [@skorytnicki](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/skorytnicki)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2025, 12:14pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/2 "2025-10-14T12:14:27Z")
Great news. I’ll give it a try. I checked the internet, and there’s also an option to open Screen Time app and take a screenshot. Then some AI can analyse content of the screenshot. ---
**Author:** ![aad](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/aad/32/4736_2.png) [@aad](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/aad)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2025, 7:02am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/3 "2025-10-15T07:02:31Z")
(I tried this to check vision capacities of an LLM we’re hosting (at my job). It works pretty well if you ask the model to respond with structured output.) ---
**Author:** ![gmzamz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gmzamz](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/gmzamz)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2025, 9:16am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/4 "2025-10-15T09:16:58Z")
I considered that, but my plan for all of my goals is to have them more or less automated. Going from screenshot\>save\>upload to $LLM\>chat\>copy to Beeminder is just too much. You could definitely automate pretty much every bit of that except the screenshot\>share part out though. Hallucination could be a problem but that’s not nearly as bad with simple text OCR like this in my experience. The biggest blocker is that there’s no way to tell good!reddit from bad!reddit with just a single duration. Balancing the useful parts of Reddit against the tendency to scroll is hard, and frankly I’m failing horribly at it. ---
**Author:** ![skorytnicki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/skorytnicki/32/4204_2.png) [@skorytnicki](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/skorytnicki)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2025, 9:39am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/5 "2025-10-15T09:39:02Z")
Your approach is correct and it makes total sense. > The biggest blocker is that there’s no way to tell good!reddit from bad!reddit The interesting question is why do we want to reduce screen time, what’s the goal here and what will the side effects be. In my opinion, it’s just important to decrease the usage when it is a parasite on quality time slots (for focused work, for family). I put the longer explanation and solution idea in the post below. > [@Put phone away box](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/put-phone-away-box/12554): > > This weekend I’m planning to tackle a simple project to reduce my screen time. I dedicated some thinking to this topic and maybe my case will be interesting to you. Analysing my usage patterns, basically there’s time where screen time is justified (waiting in a queue, commute in public transportation) and there’s time where it very isn’t - for example when kids are home or when I could spend time with my wife. It’s important to “weigh” the time, or classify the time and put proper attention to … ---
**Author:** ![luizbazon](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/luizbazon/32/3118_2.png) [@luizbazon](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/luizbazon)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2025, 11:03pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/6 "2025-10-16T23:03:43Z")
This is very useful and I was looking for this! But I’m in a weird state. The shortcut workflow works and it’s creating the datapoint on Beeminder. But for whatever reason, Jomo shortcut is outputting a completely different wrong screen time that is showing in their own app or Apple official app… Opal also returns a wrong number. Did you face this issue too? I also already checked “Share screentime across devices” is not enabled. ---
**Author:** ![halflight89](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/halflight89/32/6188_2.png) [@halflight89](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/halflight89)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2025, 9:27am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/7 "2025-10-17T09:27:36Z")
I checked the shortcut too. Initially, I got an error. But now it works fine. Things I adjusted: - for some languages, time is separated with a comma instead of a dot (Dutch for example) - make sure you just have one app connected to screentime settings - reboot the device and then refresh both normal and estimated screentime (dots right top - more) - I’m still checking if it excludes the right apps, so that I won’t accidentally max out because I practiced choir - but so far it seems to be working. Edit: just noticed what might be the issue. Apple tracks websites too. And by that I don’t just mean the obvious browsing, but like Duolingo ads (from some google page) or visit an url in an app too. I just added the whole “other” category to excluded apps, to make sure the numbers make sense. ---
**Author:** ![gmzamz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gmzamz](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/gmzamz)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2025, 10:28am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/8 "2025-10-17T10:28:13Z")
There’s a setting in jomo that determines what apps it tracks for total Screentime. Settings\>screentime\>estimated Screentime\>improve estimate\>select all apps ---
**Author:** ![skorytnicki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/skorytnicki/32/4204_2.png) [@skorytnicki](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/skorytnicki)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2025, 4:23pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/9 "2025-11-10T16:23:55Z")
Jomo shortcut and widgets show my total screen time from all devices. I unchecked the option to share iOS screen time, the same on my mac, I restarted the phone. It still shows 9h (includes time from the laptop). The same happens for my regular screen time apps. Did you have the same problem? ---
**Author:** ![gmzamz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gmzamz](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/gmzamz)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2025, 6:23am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-track-ios-screentime-automatically/12555/10 "2025-11-11T06:23:54Z")
If you go into Jomo settings there’s an estimated screen time section where you can refresh it. seems to be a limitation of how Apple exposes the data sadly. The estimation that is