Digital Wellbeing: Here are new features on Android Q

Last year, Google announced digital wellbeing, a dashboard that shows the total time you've spent on your phone, the number of times you've unlocked your phone and the notifications you've received. According to a recent survey, most of the users reported a positive impact on their wellbeing.

For instance, app timers have helped users stick to their goals over 90 per cent of the time and according to an internal data from Google, people who use Wind Down had a 27 per cent drop in nightly usage on average. And since technology is now intertwined in our daily lives, Google at is annual I/O conference have announced new features in the digital wellbeing that will come with Android Q.

Google has made several improvements to existing features, such as giving you more visibility into the status of your app timers, and allowing Wind Down to be scheduled by day of the week. And seeing the popularity of app timers among users, Google is extending its functionality to Chrome on Android, which will now let you to set time limits on specific websites.

And while notifications keep us informed, but not all of them are important enough to attract our attention. Thus, Google is now giving you the ability to make some notifications ‘Gentle’. While these Gentle notifications won’t make noise, vibrate or appear on the lock screen but are always available if you want to browse.

There will also be a Focus mode, which will allow you to temporarily pause distracting apps with a single tap from Quick Settings.

One of the important feature will come in Family Link. According to a Google commissioned study, for parents, screen time is often a unique challenge; in fact, 67 per cent of parents are concerned about the amount of time their kids spend on devices. While Family Link lets them set daily screen time limits, Google last week announced that Family Link will roll out new features that will enable parents to fine-tune these boundaries by setting app-specific time limits and awarding bonus screen time directly from their own device.

Daily app timers can be set for each app to limit the time you want to spend on each app. Once the time is up, digital wellbeing will push you a notification, and will turn the app icon to grey. You no longer will be able to use that app unless you go into settings and change the app timer.

The company will also offer tips and advice from experts, including a conversation guide to help parents talk to their kids about technology use on wellbeing.google.