Frequently asked

Apple’s Screen Time tells you how much you used your phone. Stilla helps you understand why, and change it. You log what triggers a craving, get short research-backed nudges, journal how you feel, and earn a milestone for each clean day. It even sorts your apps into what lifts you, gets things done, or pulls you in, so you see what your time was worth instead of just a number.

Stilla runs on iPhone and iPad today. A Mac version is on the roadmap.

Apple’s Screen Time can combine usage from every device signed into the same iCloud account (iPhone, iPad, Mac). By default Stilla counts only the device you’re holding, so its numbers reflect this iPhone alone. That’s why an app you also use elsewhere, like a browser you run on your Mac, can look higher in your iPhone’s Settings (which may be showing all devices) than it does in Stilla.

Yes. Open Settings, then Screen Time, and switch the dropdown from “This device” to “All devices.” Stilla then adds usage from every device on your iCloud account, like your Mac and iPad, to your totals. Switch it back to “This device” anytime to focus on just this iPhone.

iOS caches the usage report for each scope. Give it up to a minute, or fully close Stilla (swipe it away in the app switcher) and reopen it. The numbers refresh on the next launch.

Both are Premium modes. Nudge sets a daily time limit on your chosen apps. When you reach it, the app is shielded with a short, research-backed message and a “Go Back” button, a pause rather than a punishment. Block keeps selected apps and websites shielded whenever you try to open them. Breathing exercises and the other interventions live in the Craving toolkit, which you open yourself anytime an urge hits. They aren’t tied to the limit.

Yes. In Nudge and Block modes you can rein in Safari and block specific websites you add, alongside the apps you’re managing.

Stilla sorts each app into one of three: Lifts you, Gets it done, or Pulls you. It makes a first guess (learning and fitness apps tend to lift, social and video tend to pull, everything else is a tool), but you decide. Hold any app in the Screen Time view to reclassify it and it sticks, so you see what share of your day was time well spent instead of just raw minutes.

The time you see is the real per-app duration from Apple’s Screen Time, read inside a privileged on-device report, so it’s accurate rather than an estimate. The only thing Stilla approximates is the internal timing it uses to trigger Nudge limits and detect a clean day, which can be a few minutes off right around a boundary.

Each tracked app’s streak counts the whole calendar days since you last used it. Open it again and that app’s streak resets, rolling over at midnight. Because iOS reports usage in the background, very recent use can take a few minutes to register.

“Today on screen” is the time between midnight and now in your local time, so the day starts at zero and fills in as you use your phone. If you opened the “See all usage” sheet just before midnight it may still show the previous day’s numbers for a moment while Home is already on the new day. Both views catch up within a few minutes of your first app use today.

When you pick apps in Apple’s app picker you can also pick whole categories (like “Social” or “Games”). iOS stores each category as one opaque token, the framework gives no way for any app to see or count the individual apps inside it. Home shows only the count of individual apps you picked. Protection shows the total of what you picked, apps plus whole categories. So if you mostly picked categories the two numbers can look different even though they describe the same selection.

Tracked is rendered by Apple’s Screen Time extension, which can take a few seconds to wake up on the first open of a session. If it hasn’t drawn after about five seconds, that hint nudges you to switch tabs once, which forces iOS to re-mount the report. It’s a quirk of the underlying framework, not a problem with your data.

On Premium, Stilla sends a summary every Sunday morning: how much time you spent on your tracked apps, and how many clean days you had that week. It’s built from usage Stilla records quietly in the background all week.

Yes. Monitor mode is free forever: track unlimited apps, see your usage, and use the journal, cravings toolkit, and daily motivators. Premium adds the Nudge and Block modes (app and website limits), the weekly Sunday summary, and premium app icons.

Subscriptions are handled through your Apple ID. Open Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions to change or cancel anytime. You keep Premium until the current period ends, then drop back to the free Monitor mode.

No. We have no servers, no analytics, and no tracking. Your data lives on your device and syncs only through your own private iCloud, tied to your Apple ID, which we can’t see. The single third-party service is RevenueCat, which manages your subscription with an anonymous ID, never your name or email.

Stilla uses Apple’s Screen Time framework (Family Controls) to read your app usage and apply limits or blocks. Apple keeps the underlying data on your device, so Stilla only ever sees the summaries it shows you.

No. Stilla relies on Apple’s built-in, battery-efficient Screen Time APIs and does its work on-device, so there’s no heavy background processing.