Among the many new features in Android Pie, one of the biggest (and possibly one of the most useful) one was Digital Wellbeing — Google’s attempt at helping people regain control over their smartphone addiction. However, even now, the feature isn’t available on a whole lot of devices other than the Pixel line up of smartphones, and some Android One phones in the wild. So, if you’ve been waiting to get your hands on it, here is how you can get Digital Wellbeing on any Android phone running Android 9 Pie.
Previously, we’ve written an article about getting Digital Wellbeing on rooted Android Pie smartphones, however, not everyone wants to root their phone, and if you’re one of those people, this guide is for you.
Nova Launcher will then show you a list of activities that it can launch based on the apps installed on your phone. Tap on Digital Wellbeing. From the list that opens up, tap on the one that says ‘.home.TopLevelSettingsActivity.’
Wind Down: This feature basically turns your display grayscale when it’s time for you to sleep, to make it easier for you to get to bed on time without being distracted by your phone. Plus, it turns off notifications so your sleep isn’t disturbed.
App Timers: This one is kind of big, because setting app timers is a pretty major part of using Digital Wellbeing to combat smartphone addiction.
Anyway, I’ll keep trying to figure out some way of getting these things to work, but in the meanwhile, you’ll be able to use Digital Wellbeing on your Android Pie smartphone to at least get an idea of how much time you’re spending on your phone, and on which apps. I’ll update this article whenever a fix for these features comes out, so check back for updates. Also, if you’d like to combat smartphone addiction by limiting your usage of different apps, you should check out some great app blocker apps as well.
