The premise behind RescueTime has always been pretty simple: You can make better decisions about your time when you know exactly where it’s going.
But most people looking at their RescueTime reports are only looking at half a day: the laptop half. The other half happens on a phone, and until recently it was mostly invisible.
With new and improved features for mobile tracking, location insights, timesheets, and more, the RescueTime mobile app gives you a clearer picture of what your day truly looks like and support your efforts to avoid distractions and stay focused.
Here’s what’s worth opening the app for.
You focus better in some places than others. Now you’ll know which.
Curious about where you focus best? When you start a new Focus Session, you can opt to record the location to see where you get the most work done.
For anyone who works from more than one place, this answers a question that guessing never could. You get a clearer picture of where you actually knock items off your to-do list and where you end up distracted and accomplishing almost no focused work. Instead of guessing which environment works best for you, you can use your data to decide where to tackle different kinds of work.
Location is recorded only when you choose to record it, only on sessions you start, and it stays tied to your own data. RescueTime is not tracking where you go.
Goals, and a limit you can’t talk yourself out of
You can now set goals based on time spent in specific apps/categories, with “more than” and “less than” targets. Tap the + beside Goals on the home screen.
The setting worth knowing about is the Block until tomorrow option, which allows you to set a limit you can’t easily talk yourself out of. Set “less than 30 minutes on Instagram,” and once you hit that limit, it stays blocked for the rest of the day.
Standard screen time limits give you an “Ignore Limit” button, which most people learn to tap without thinking. This one has no button.
Distraction counts, not just distraction minutes
RescueTime doesn’t just show how much distracting activity happened. It also tracks how many times you shifted into a distraction. Forty minutes of distractions spread across twelve separate interruptions costs you more than forty minutes spent in one block. The first one wrecks your concentration twelve times. The second one wrecks it once.
The Distractions section on your home screen now shows how many times your attention shifted, alongside which apps caused the most shifts. Is there a top contender that consistently steals your attention? It may be time to return to your Goals and set a limit for the time you spend on that app.
Focus sessions you can schedule ahead
You know you tend to doomscroll for a while after lunch or tend to get caught up in checking email. Now, you can schedule a Focus Session in advance with a start time, length, and blocking rules, so the session starts whether or not you’ve already jumped back into focused work.
Daily focus sessions build a streak, and a two-month heatmap shows which days you focus best. It’s the data you need to better map out your workweek.
Your timesheet is automatically created for you
Reconstructing last Tuesday from your calendar, browser history, and Slack messages is a bad use of a Friday afternoon.
The Timesheets Timeline gives you a visual record of your day built from activity RescueTime automatically tracked.
Just like the desktop app, the mobile app automatically tracks your online activity to give you detailed reports and insights about where your time is going. Activity is pre-sorted into projects where possible, and you can edit each entry straight from your phone.
Just tap a block to fix the times, assign it to a project, or add a note.
Offline work finally counts
RescueTime never saw the two hours you spent on a client call or thinking on a walk. Now, you can log that time manually from your phone. Pick an activity, set the date and start and end times, create custom activities, and add a description. It takes ten seconds while the work is still fresh.
Light and dark mode options personalize your experience
Jump into your settings and you can toggle between light and dark mode. Choose the display setting you’re most comfortable with, and change it as often as you want.
How mobile tracking works on your device
Mobile activity works differently depending on your device.
Android: RescueTime records which apps you use and for how long, then uploads that data automatically. Phone activity is combined with desktop activity, so it rolls in your existing reports as one picture of your time.
iOS: RescueTime uses Apple’s Screen Time framework, which keeps mobile activity on your device. Your phone data appears in the Mobile tab only. Desktop reporting on the web stays as it is.
On both platforms, the first thing to tackle after installing is to sort your apps into the five productivity levels: Focus Work, Other Work, Neutral, Personal, Distracting. Ten minutes of sorting is what makes every report after it accurate.
Build a better workday with RescueTime
The more you understand about how you spend your time, the easier it becomes to shape your day around what actually works for you. Our newest features are designed to give you more of that context without any additional effort on your part.
Whether you need a better idea of how your phone fits into your day or you simply need some help keeping your brain focused, RescueTime has the data and tools you need.
Download RescueTime for iOS or Android to start exploring what your screen time habits can tell you.
See a complete overview of RescueTime for iOS here.
See a complete overview of RescueTime for Android here.
