We’ve seen Google talk about all of its plans to get us to live a digitally healthy lifestyle with its Digital Wellbeing program. Although this was introduced during the Google I/O Conference, we haven’t seen actual devices that would run this. Well in light of Android 9.0 being officially outed already, they are also now making the beta version of this available for those Pixel devices that will start running on Pie. Note that they only mentioned Pixel to run Digital Wellbeing but hopefully other Android devices that will get the Android 9.0 update will also get it.
We’ve already previously discussed what are some of the features, but here is the official overview of what Digital Wellbeing will bring to your phone. You get a Dashboard which will give you an idea of how much time you spend on your phone. It will show you graphs and charts of how much time you spend on different apps, how many times you compulsively unlock your phone during the day, and how many notifications you receive. The idea of showing you all these “scary” facts is to make you stop and analyze how much time you are spending on your phone and then do something about it.
The do something part comes with App Timers. It lets you set a limit on how much time you’re allowed to spend on the apps that you usually just open and browse. Previously we though you’ll just receive a reminder that your time’s up but based on the screenshot, the app will actually pause and tell you your time will resume again tomorrow. The Do Not Disturb mode meanwhile will stop all notifications and sounds from appearing on your screen during important meetings or when at dinner with family and friends.
If you use the Wind Down feature, it will ask you to specifically set a bedtime. When you’re nearing that time, your smartphone will automatically go into the Do Not Disturb mode. Your screen will also start turning into grayscale mode so you will start “disconnecting” with your device and eventually just stop using it altogether by the time you’re supposed to sleep.
After you’ve installed the Android 9.0 Pie update, go to Google’s sign-up page and then install the Digital Wellbeing Beta from the Google Play Store. Take note that this will only be available for the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL devices, hopefully just for now. It will be pushed to “other” Pixel devices, which may refer to the upcoming Pixel 3 line.
SOURCE: Google
