In the digital age, smartphones have become an integral part of our lives, becoming a powerful tool for work, communication and entertainment. But often we don’t notice how endlessly scrolling through social media feeds or watching short videos drags us on hours, taking precious time and affecting productivity. For owners of Xiaomi devices running on the shell of MIUI or the new HyperOS, there is a built-in mechanism to track these statistics in detail.
Understanding where your day goes is the first step toward digital detox and putting your gadget in order. The built-in Android tools, adapted by Xiaomi engineers, provide comprehensive insights into which apps you run most often and how many minutes or hours you spend on them daily, and are not just dry numbers, but an important analytical tool for self-monitoring.
In this guide, we will take a detailed look at all the ways to get statistics, from standard system settings to hidden features available through an engineering menu or third-party utilities, and learn not only to view data, but also to set limits to regain control of your own time and time.
Using the built-in functionality of Digital Well-being
The main tool for monitoring user activity in the Android ecosystem is the service Digital Well-being. On Xiaomi smartphones, it is integrated deep into the system and is available through the main settings menu. To access this information, you need to open the Settings section and find the item with the appropriate name, which usually appears at the top of the list or in the category "System applications".
When you go to the menu, you'll see a dashboard that shows you all the usage statistics for the day, and it shows you the total time you've spent with your phone, the number of times you've run different programs, and even the frequency of your screen unlocks, and it allows you to quickly measure the dynamics: if you've spent more time on your phone today than you normally do, the system will highlight the change.
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For quick access to statistics, add the Digital Well-Being widget to your desktop or notification curtain to always see relevant data without diving deep into the menu.
It is important to note that the data is updated in real time, but can have a small delay of a few minutes.If you just closed a heavy app, it may not immediately show up in the overall time balance.The system also divides usage into categories such as Social Networks, Games or Productivity, which makes it easier to analyze habits.
⚠️ Note: If you manually reset the statistics or reinstall the Security app, your usage history for previous days may be lost because the data is stored locally on your device.
Detailed analysis through the Security app
The MIUI and HyperOS shells are key to the system application Security, which combines the functions of antivirus, cleaner and controller Battery. This is often where more detailed power settings are hidden that directly correlate with the use time of applications. Going to the Battery section, you will see a list of programs sorted by the percentage of charge they consumed.
While this list shows energy consumption, it indirectly but very accurately reflects activity time. The apps you've used the longest are almost always at the top of the Active Screen consumption list. By clicking on a particular app on this list, you can see a detailed breakdown of how long it's been running in the background and how long it's been running when the screen was on.
- 📱 Screen time: Shows the exact duration of interaction with the program interface.
- 🔋 Background activity: Shows how much resources the app was wasting before you used it.
- 🚀 Autorun: Indicates whether the program has the right to run itself, which affects the overall statistics of the system.
Using a battery partition is particularly useful for identifying “hidden time eaters.” It often happens that the user does not remember sitting in a particular application for long, but statistics show the opposite, which may indicate that the program was running in the background, playing videos or downloading content, which is also taken into account in the total time of the device.
☑️ Checking application activity
Setting up restrictions and timers for applications
Just knowing the statistics is not enough, it's important to be able to manage it. The application timer feature in the Digital Well-being menu allows you to set time limits for each particular program. When you reach a set limit, the system blocks access to the application until the next day, reminding you to take a break.
To set up, go to Settings → Digital Well-Being → App Timer. Here you will see a list of all installed programs with a timeline for today. By clicking on the desired application, you can set a time interval, for example, 30 minutes for social networks or 1 hour for games. Once the time has expired, the application icon will turn gray, and you can only start it by removing the restriction.
This feature is particularly effective when combined with Do Not Disturb or Sleep mode, which are also customized in this section, and by combining these tools, you create a rigid framework that helps form healthy digital habits and prevents aimless pastime.
| Function | Description | Where to find out. |
|---|---|---|
| Application timer | Blocking access after the limit has expired | Digital well-being |
| Sleep regimen | Disable notifications and gray screen at night | Digital Well-Being / Settings |
| Parental control | Remote time management on the child’s device | Family Link / Settings |
| Disabling notifications | Hiding pop-up messages to reduce phone cravings | Notification settings |
Hidden functions and engineering menu statistics
For advanced users who are not enough standard reports, it is possible to access deeper layers of statistics through special codes or data. ADB-However, in modern versions, MIUI Access to the classic engineering menu is limited, and many features are moved to the hidden developer menu.
One way to get detailed information is to use the command line through a computer, and by connecting your smartphone over USB and enabling debugging, you can request usage history through ADB, which allows you to upload the data in text format for later analysis in tables.
adb shell dumpsys usagestatsThis command will output a huge amount of data about all the events in the system. For the average user, this method may seem too complicated, but it gives the most complete picture, including the operating time of system processes that are hidden in the standard interface. Be careful when changing the settings through the engineering menus, as incorrect actions can lead to unstable system operation.
⚠️ Warning: Do not change the values in the engineering menu unless you are sure of their purpose.This can lead to resetting the network settings or incorrect display of battery power.
Third-party applications for deep analytics
If you don't have the built-in tools, Google Play offers a variety of alternatives: apps like ActionDash or QualityTime provide more flexible reporting settings, the ability to export data, and even remotely manage statistics from other devices, often with a friendlier interface and advanced gamification features for the quitting process.
However, installing third-party trackers has its nuances: applications require extensive permissions to access usage history, which may raise questions about data privacy. In addition, aggressive battery optimization in MIUI can kill the trackers’ background processes, which makes the statistics incomplete.
To make the third-party application work correctly on Xiaomi, you need to:
- 🔒 Fix the application in memory (locks in the menu of recent tasks).
- 🔋 In the battery settings, select the "No restrictions" mode».
- 🛡️ In the Security app, add a tracker to the antivirus exceptions.
Security of Third-Party Trackers
Problems with displaying statistics and their solution
Users sometimes experience a situation where statistics are not updated, zero values are displayed or time is incorrect, most often due to an error in the system process com.android.statementservice or the service itself Digital Well-being, in which case cleaning the cache of the corresponding application helps.
To do this, go to Settings → Apps → All apps, search the list of “Digital Wellbeing” (or Digital Wellbeing) and click “Clear Data.” Don’t worry, this will not delete your personal files, but only reset the settings and cache of the monitoring service itself. Once the device is rebooted, the statistics will begin to be collected again.
It’s also worth checking the operating system version, and older MIUI builds may have had time-calculation bugs in certain application categories, and upgrading to the latest version of HyperOS or stable MIUI build often solves these problems.
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If the statistics don’t work, cleaning the data of the Digital Wellbeing system application and restarting the device 90% of the time solves the problem.