How to see how much time you spent in Xiaomi apps: from built-in tools to hidden MIUI chips

Have you ever caught yourself thinking you’re spending too much time on social media or gaming? Xiaomi’s MIUI-powered smartphones offer several ways to track how many hours (or minutes) you’ve spent in an app. This information isn’t just useful for self-monitoring — it helps you optimize your use of your gadget, detect battery eaters, and even diagnose suspicious background activity.

In this article, we will discuss 5 working methods, from standard MIUI tools to little-known features and third-party applications, how to look at statistics for a day, a week or a month, how to save reports to a file, and why data may differ across services, and how to circumvent the limitations of MIUI if your smartphone model does not support built-in time monitoring.

1.The built-in Digital Balance in MIUI: Where to look and how to set up

The most obvious way to do this is to use the Digital Balance (formerly Screen Time) feature that is available in MIUI 12 and later, which shows not only the time you use the apps, but also the number of screen unlocks, and compares your activity with previous periods.

To find her:

• 📱 Open the Settings. → Digital balance (on some models the path may differ: Settings) → Annexes → Digital balance).
• 📊 At the top of the screen you will see a pie chart with time distribution by category (social networks, games, productivity, etc.).
• 🔍 Scroll down to the Application Usage Statistics section, where you can see a detailed report on each application.
• 📅 Click on the calendar icon in the upper right corner to select the period (day/week/month).

Note that by default, MIUI may hide some system processes. To see the full picture, turn on the option to Show System Applications in the Digital Balance settings.

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If your MIUI version does not have a Digital Balance section, upgrade to the latest version or use alternative methods from the following sections.

2. Hidden “Time of Use” feature in Xiaomi account settings

Few people know, but Xiaomi keeps statistics on device usage not only locally, but also in the cloud service linked to your Mi Account, which is available even if you reset your phone or reinstall the firmware, as long as you log in to the same account.

How to see it:

1. Open Settings → Xiaomi Account → Mi Cloud → Use Time.
2. Sign in if you need to.
3. Select the device from the list (if several gadgets are tied to the account).
4. Look at the activity charts for the last 7 or 30 days.

The advantage of this method is cross-platform: you can see statistics not only from your smartphone, but also from your tablet or laptop (if they are synchronized with the Mi Account), but the data here is less detailed than in Digital Balance.

3. Use of “Security” to monitor activity

The Security app in MIUI not only protects against viruses, but also keeps an activity log, and you can find data on application life, as well as traffic consumption and battery life.

Instructions:

• 🛡️ Launch the Security app (if it isn’t on the desktop, search through search).
• 📈 Go to the Optimization or Battery tab (name depends on version) MIUI).
• 🔋 Scroll down to the Battery Use block and click on it.
• ⏱️ At the top of the screen, select a period (e.g., “Last day»).
• 📊 Below will be a list of applications indicating the working time in the background and in the foreground.

This method is useful because it shows a correlation between the time of use and the battery consumption, for example, if an application has been running for 2 hours but has run out of 30% of its charge, this is an excuse to check its settings or delete it.

4 Third-party applications: ActionDash, Digital Wellbeing and others

If the built-in tools MIUI You can't do it enough, you can use third-party utilities, and they often offer more flexible settings and data visualization.-3 tested applications:

Before installing third-party utilities, check their permissions. Some applications require access to special features (for example, to track the use of other programs), which can be a security risk. Always download the software from official sources, such as Google Play or Mi App Store.

Check the reviews and rating of the application | Make sure the developer has specified contacts for support |Read the privacy policy |Create a backup of data before installing-->

5. ADB-Advanced Users: How to Pull Out Full Logs

If you’re ready to dive into the technical details, you can extract your app usage time data through Android Debug Bridge (ADB).This method is suitable for developers or power users who want to get raw logs without handling MIUI.

Step-by-step:

1. Turn on Developer Mode on your smartphone: go to Settings → About Phone → MIUI version and press 7 times in a row.
2. Return to Settings → Additional → For developers and activate Debugging over USB.
3. Connect your phone to your PC, install ADB Tools, and execute the command:

adb shell dumpsys usagestats

This command will display a full report of the usage time of all applications in recent days. To save the data in a file, use:

adb shell dumpsys usagestats > usage_stats.txt

⚠️ Attention: working with ADB The wrong commands can disrupt the system. If you are not sure of your actions, use other methods from this article.

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ADB-It's the most complete and raw data, but it requires technical skills. MIUI or third-party applications.

Why can the time of use data differ?

You may have noticed that the numbers in Digital Balance, Security, and third-party apps don't match. That's OK, and here's why:

• 🕒 Different periods of accounting: some services count from midnight, others - from the last unlock.
• 🔄 Background activity: Some apps (such as instant messengers) may be counted as “active” even if you don’t use them directly.
• 📱 Synchronization errors: If the time on the device is lost or settings have been reset, the data may be duplicated or lost.
• 🛠️ Optimization MIUI: Firmware can artificially “freeze” background processes, which distorts statistics.

To obtain the most accurate data, it is recommended:

1. Use the same source for monitoring (e.g., Digital Balance only).
2. Reset statistics manually before a new period (e.g. every Monday).
3. Turn off automatic optimization in Settings → Battery → Battery Optimization for Critical Applications.

FAQ: Frequent questions about the time of using applications on Xiaomi