Google has launched three new apps under ‘digital well-being experiment’ for Android. In its experiments with Google webpage, Google explains that each experiment app has been designed keeping in mind that each user behaves differently. Back in October 2019, Google launched six apps under the platform and now there are three new apps. Here is a look at each of them:
Screen stopwatch
The Screen stopwatch app is aimed to help you learn how long you spend on your phone each day. Each time you unlock your phone, the stopwatch continues to count. It includes a live wallpaper app that shows in bold text your screen time on the home page.
Activity Bubbles
Similar to the previous app, this app also includes a live wallpaper. However, unlike the previous app, this app only tracks how many times you unlock your phone by dropping a bubble from the top to bottom each time you unlock it. The longer you use the phone, the bigger the bubble gets.
Envelope
This app is said to “temporarily transforms your phone into a simpler, calmer device” by using paper envelopes that house your smartphone making it distraction free and only allowing it to serve basic purposes including calling, clicking a picture or recording a video. For now, it only works for Google’s Pixel 3a smartphone.
“Once you’ve printed and folded our special pdf into an envelope it will turn your phone into a very basic device which can only make and receive calls helping you focus on what’s in front of you,” says the app description. The printed buttons on the case light up subtly as part of “Envelope User Interface”.
Google says that it was inspired by a recent trend where people purchase a second, simpler phone for holidays and weekends, as a way of limiting their access to technology to create this app. At the end of the day, when users take out their phone out of the envelope, they see how many times they used it.
