how finit measures
What finit measures, and what it can't.
Every screen-time app shows you a number. Almost none of them tell you how that number was made. This page does, including the parts that make finit look less impressive than it could.
The short version: finit measures nothing. Your iPhone already counts your app usage, per app, per day, more accurately than any third-party app is permitted to. finit's entire job is to take that count, write it down, and then leave it alone.
Where the number comes from
iOS keeps its own per-app count for Screen Time. finit never runs a timer of its own, never watches which app is in front, and never estimates a day it did not receive.
iOS hands that count to another app only when you ask it to. That is why finit ships a Shortcut called Finit Import, plus two automations that run it: one when you open finit, one each night at 0:30. A run asks iOS for a day of app activity and passes the result to the app. At most once a day, the same run also refreshes the last four weeks, which repairs the days a missed night would otherwise have cost you.
What arrives is a plain list: an app name and a duration, per app, for one day. finit stores it as that day's record. A day is your device's day, local midnight to local midnight, in the calendar your iPhone uses. The day's total is the sum of the durations Apple handed over. finit computes no total of its own.
What is in the number
- Every app iOS reports, Apple's own system entries included: EyeReliefUI, Screenshots and their relatives. Settings counts them, so finit does not quietly subtract them to make your day look tidier.
- Entries shorter than a minute. The day's app list leaves them out, because a row reading "0m" is padding rather than information. The seconds stay in storage, and in the total above the list.
- Repeated names, summed. iOS occasionally reports the same app twice within one day.
And nothing else. The import carries app names and durations: which app, for how long. No content, no messages, no notifications, no browsing history, nothing you typed. What leaves your device, and where it goes, is spelled out in the privacy policy.
What is left out, on purpose
Websites
The Shortcuts action can return apps and websites together, and it is tempting, because youtube.com as its own row looks like more detail. But website time is already counted inside the browser's app time, so importing both counts the same minutes twice and inflates every total that follows. finit imports apps only. The cost is real and worth stating plainly: you will not find individual sites in finit. Those minutes sit inside Safari, or Chrome, or whichever browser you used. The lists are sliced differently from Apple's; the daily totals agree.
Your other devices
The action reads the device it runs on: your iPhone. iPad and Mac time appear only if you turn on Share Across Devices and switch the action to All Devices. The steps are in support. Until you do that, finit is an iPhone record, and it says so rather than implying more.
Pickups and notifications
The import carries durations, not pickup or notification counts. finit is a record of time, not of interruptions.
The years before you installed it
iOS keeps roughly four weeks of detail and then deletes it. On the day you set finit up, it walks back as far as Apple still has, which is as far as anyone can walk. Everything earlier was gone before we ever met it. Those days stay empty rather than reconstructed.
Impossible lines
A line claiming more than 25 hours in a single day is discarded instead of stored. Something in the chain broke a unit, and a fabricated value is worse than a missing one.
Why finit and the Settings screen disagree
They will, by small amounts, and the reasons are boring:
- Timing. finit shows your day as of the last import. Settings recalculates the moment you look at it. Minutes spent since the last import have not arrived yet. Opening finit fetches them.
- Device scope. With Share Across Devices on, the Settings chart may include your iPad and Mac while the shortcut is reading only your iPhone.
- Apple's own smoothing. iOS smooths the figure on its own display near the end of the day, but hands apps the unsmoothed data. Small same-day deviations are normal. Every app that reads this data has them, ours included.
- The apps-only slice above. It changes which rows you see, not the total.
To compare fairly, open finit once, select your iPhone in the Settings device selector, and look at a finished day, yesterday rather than today. Whole missing hours are a different matter: that is imports not running, and finit's settings show the last run and what to fix.
When finit doesn't know, it says so
A day nobody imported gets no record at all. finit shows it as "No data", in the calendar, on the day view and in the charts. It fills the gap with nothing: no zero, no average, no interpolation.
Those days are left out of every average finit calculates, so a week you did not import cannot quietly pull your numbers down. The rule cuts both ways, and this is the part worth knowing: a day you truly did not touch the phone also arrives as an empty list, and an empty list writes no record. It shows as no data rather than as a measured zero, and it does not lower your average either.
finit has had no estimation layer since July 2026. One estimated number is left in the app: the lifetime projection built from the daily pace you enter yourself during onboarding. It is labeled as an estimate, kept visually apart from the measured numbers, and never written into your record as a day.
What finit will not claim
This category runs on percentages, "#1" badges and "backed by science". None of that is here, deliberately. finit claims no share of screen time saved, no user count, no rating, and no study it did not run.
Not even the easy privacy line. finit does not tell you that your data never leaves your phone. Your record syncs through your own private iCloud database. The optional friends feature sends one weekly total that you chose to share, rounded to half an hour. Anonymous diagnostics can be switched off in Settings: crash reports and a small set of events, never a screen-time value. The exact list of what goes where is in the privacy policy.
If we ever publish a number about what finit does to people's screen time, it will arrive with its method attached, or it will not arrive.
Found something wrong on this page?
Then we would rather hear it from you than read it later. Write to [email protected] with the day, what finit showed, what Settings showed, and which device was selected. Corrections change this page.
Last reviewed 1 September 2026 · iOS 26.
