App to cut your smartphone addiction

APPLE will launch new controls and reports to help users limit the amount of time they spend staring at their smartphones.

The largest addition to this effort will be an app called Screen Time, which tracks how often you use and unlock the phone, among other things, and sends you a weekly “activity summary” which shows how you used your iPhone or iPad.

“You get deep insight on how much time you’re spending, where you’re spending it and even how your time breaks down during the day and the night,” software engineering senior vice-president Craig Federighi told Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference.

“You get a summary of the time you’re spending in apps – how often per hour you’re picking up your phone and what’s drawing you in and what apps are sending you the most notifications. Equipped with this insight, you can make decisions about how much time you want to spend with your device each day.”

Perhaps more importantly for parents, they can also set up their children’s phones to receive reports on phone usage and set “allowances” for time spent in individual apps or specify what times of the day they can use them.

All users can also set app timers for themselves – allowing just one hour a day for viewing photos on Instagram, for example – and will be reminded five minutes before their daily limit runs out.

Meanwhile, Samsung won’t be the only smartphone company letting users create emoji that looks like them – Apple will do it with MeMoji.

While the new feature doesn’t scan your face to create a wide-eyed cartoon in your likeness, like its South Korean rival does, Apple promises MeMoji will come with “an incredibly diverse” range of options.

Apple also revealed it would introduce “tongue detection” to its Animoji app so users could stick an animated tongue out at recipients and, in a nod to Australia, would introduce a koala Animoji option.

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson