Can I See a Log of Waht Patch Was Uploaded to My Phone Today?
How your smartphone tells your story: A dive into Android action data
| This commodity was written in Oct 2018, but in published in June 2019|
I was really excited when Google appear their Digital Wellbeing program, back in May 2018, especially Dashboard. Information technology tracks all your app interactions on the telephone and even helps you to limit app usage by setting time restrictions on different apps. But equally of October 2018, Google still hasn't rolled out that feature to all Android P users and is in beta even for Pixel users. So I decided to check out my own statistics with the data available at hand.
Google: My Activity
And so how did I get my app interaction history? Well, Google has to have all of it. I'g an Android user. By default, the usage history for your Android device activity is turned on in your Google activity settings. It keeps a log of all the apps you open up along with a timestamp. Unfortunately, it doesn't store the duration you spent using the app. Simply fortunately enough, Google allows this data to exist downloaded (and fifty-fifty exist erased), the treasure trove lies at takeout.google.com in the My Activity section.
Scraping the Soup
While I was expecting all of this data to exist either in JSON or CSV format, I got happy too soon. Some of the data was available in these formats, but not the Android app action, the entire activeness set can be downloaded only in HTML format. Really?! HTML?. Cute Soup to the rescue. Its a really popular python library for web scraping.
UPDATE: The newer version equally of May 2019 has JSON format data but virtually a random tenth of the records from the over 2 years dorsum are missing. Foreign how logs disappear!
The only ii important pieces of information in this file were the app name and the fourth dimension at which it was opened. Here is div associated with 1 use of an app from the HTML file:
I parsed the HTML using Cute Soup, extracted the app names and time stamps and dumped them into a Pandas data frame.
Over to cleaning the data.
Skadoosh!
With about 80000 data points over a menstruation of 3.5 years from 474 unique apps (When did I install these many?!) it was pretty evident something was incorrect. A peek into the data showed that there were many arrangement apps included in the list, like the dwelling launcher, face-unlock, arrangement clock, etc; about 102 of these. Here I also realized that the data was from 3 devices, a Xiaomi Mi 4, Moto G5 and a OnePlus 6. After removing all the entries associated with the arrangement apps, I was left with 372 apps, 67236 app interactions over a menstruation of 1134 days.
Here is a word cloud generated from the dissimilar words in the names of the apps:
Of the 372 apps, I was pretty certain that I did not accept most of them installed for long periods of time. Some apps I installed just to try them out.
Just 21 apps had over 500 interactions:
['Wear Os by Google Smartwatch (was Android Wear)', 'Instagram', 'Google', 'Twitter', 'Google Chrome: Fast & Secure', 'Gmail', 'WhatsApp Messenger', 'Android', 'Google Photos', 'Splitwise', 'YouTube', 'Messenger – Text and Video Conversation for Gratis', 'Contacts', 'Google Agenda', 'Home', 'Moto Camera', 'Facebook', 'Truecaller: Caller ID, spam blocking & Call Tape', 'Calorie Counter - MyFitnessPal', 'com.android.photographic camera', 'Inshorts - lx words News summary'] MyFitnesPal and Inshorts surprised me, maybe they had the nearly interactions because of their constant push notifications. Similarly Truecaller as well spun up with each call and hence made it to the listing.
eight Google Apps, three Social Media Apps, 2 Messaging Apps, 2 photographic camera Apps.
Also, the number of Google Apps was about a tenth of all the other apps.
For farther assay, I only considered apps that had more than 100 interactions (those that I used virtually once every week on an average). This brought the unique app-count down to 59. Here are the interaction counts for these 59 apps:
Also, when I say 'interactions', it just refers to the number of times I opened the app and no way indicates the duration I spent on it.
History and Lore
Here is a plot of my daily app interactions since the time this data was existence collected over a flow of iii.5 years:
Lets endeavour to break this down.
Chapter 1: Smartphones through the ages
I seemed to be really excited most my first smartphone. I used information technology 33% more in the first 2 months than what I used information technology in the remaining 22 months on an boilerplate. But my overall cellphone usage increased significantly when I got new cellphones, about 32% more than than when I had the older telephone.
My very commencement android telephone lasted 753 days, the next one 253 days and the current one is at a tender age of 136 days.
Chapter 2: Blank Spaces
I, knowing myself, was curious as to how there were some blank spaces in the timeline, how could I have not used the phone at all for more than a couple of days? And then I dug a little deeper to effigy out what happened during these time periods.
I went in to these particular dates in the data, searched for the apps that I used and the but social media app I found was Instagram. I went in there to bank check and found only one post with my long fourth dimension school friends.
Once more I resorted to social media to track where I was during this period in 2017. Saw merely i post on Facebook, that too just earlier the blackout:
I had just returned from India and got back to studies, starting with my very first Masters course in Computer Science. This was the beginning time I had decided to keep my cellphone away while studying, was quite productive.
Chapter 3: The United states of america of Apps: Part ane
From here on, I simply used the data from the time I was in the United States every bit it amend reflected my social media consumption and my current smartphone usage.
While in India, I had lectures at higher five days a calendar week and was living with my parents. Result? Somewhat controlled sleep cycles: waking up around 6-7 in the morning. Coincidental social media usage was evident throughout the day, but I had my college friends to alleviate the time spent on social media. WhatsApp was the advice app I used, mainly because almost everyone in my friend circle was on information technology, with majority of the utilize at night earlier winding up the day. The light patch between one am to 7 am shows my average slumber time.
Coming to the U.s. was a new feel. I didn't know many people, well most no one to start with. Then the I had to resort to social media to be in touch with my friends and family unit and exist occupied in my spare time; WhatsApp usage increased drastically. Facebook and Instagram usage too increased as those were the but medium by which I could be aware of what was happening in the lives of those back at home with whom I couldn't communicate regularly.
Another evident matter, my sleep scheduled: totally messed upwards! I didn't have lectures everyday and and when I had, they were late in the solar day, so I had no reason to get upward early (other than the obvious fact that its good for you!). Besides, I felt more productive working tardily nights. The gloomy Seattle weather condition didn't help much either, getting me to wake up simply before or effectually noon. Belatedly night messaging too increased due to the time zone departure between Seattle and all my friends dorsum in Republic of india. The nighttime patch between 5/6am to xi/12pm shows my average slumber time during my outset twelvemonth in the US! Later, after the first 2 semesters my schedule improved a lot.
While the above heat map was merely for my first twelvemonth in the Usa, the i below shows data for my stay till now. Facebook Messenger usage also saw some increase as well-nigh of my friends here in the U.s.a. didn't use WhatsApp, then this was our means of communication other than calls.
As for productivity apps, they weren't used as much equally they should have been. Contacts (or calls) were predominant during late nights, when it was morning back home in India. Gmail was existent bright just afterward noon, as presently equally I got up (during the first year) and while I was at work or schoolhouse at noon(during the second year). I began using emails magnitudes more than than what I used to dorsum in India, mainly for my internship applications and other communication from the university.
Chapter 4: Piece of work
Once I started working xl hours a week during my internship, some apps' usage saw a stark change, specially the productivity apps. I had presumed that I would be using more of emails while at work, which I did, just non on my phone. About of the emailing happened on the company's reckoner. Electronic mail usage during the 2 months before getting an internship was twice the usage afterward getting 1. Earlier getting a job, each and every e-mail notification felt like a notification from a prospective interviewer so I made information technology a point to read every electronic mail I received on my telephone. The overall weekly trend stayed the aforementioned; rare usage during the weekends.
The most astounding realization that I had, which I e'er used to think was but a gangland-myth whenever I heard information technology from someone : "Your daily schedule volition get back to normal once you showtime working". Well, it did, somewhat. I now sleep around ane am and get up around 7–8 am. Not quite a good for you practice, but still better than sleeping at four or v am. Its just been 2 months, I am still getting used to this change in my schedule.
These violin plots show the distribution of app interactions for different periods. The thinner regions show my the sleeping hours, where app use is minimal (not visible as zeros because violin plots use interpolation and approximations to plot the density) Even though the sleep cycle is virtually back to how it was in India, the overall social media interactions accept increased afterwards the internship began.
Chapter 5: The United states of Apps: Role 2
I stopped using Facebook on my phone since I got the new device, I felt that I spent mode too much time on it, endlessly scrolling through the feed. I only use Facebook on my computer now.
Instagram and Twitter saw and dip in usage towards August/September 2018 when I was preparing for my interviews in full swing. Twitter on the other hand saw a steady increase in utilize since early 2018. I felt it was the fastest source of information on the current affairs and other topics. I started the #100DaysOfML claiming by Siraj Raval in Baronial and since then Twitter became a large source of links to Machine Learning articles and electric current happenings in that domain.
Effectually Dec 2016 was the time I started subscribing to Tech Channels, Vloggers and Late Night talk shows shows on YouTube and since then my YouTube usage simply kept going up. By mid 2018, there weren't any skilful new YouTube channels coming up so my subscriptions have stagnated since, and also considering I actively stopped diving into rabbit holes on YouTube.
Chapter 6: Click!
Some of my camera interactions.
May 2019
Since writing this article long time back half dozen months agone, I have actively fabricated it a point to keep a check on my smartphone usage. Since and then, YouTube and many other social media platforms have come up upwardly with a feature that gives yous notifications when you have spent a certain amount of time on the app. On the other hand, dark mode on these apps has proved out of be a bane in disguise. I haven't had a look at my new stats but I'm pretty sure my night time is of the apps might have shot up.
Also, now that the data is readily available in JSON format, I programme on doing much detailed analysis using Tableau, a faster way of producing the same visualizations with better interactivity. Diverse other data points like e-mail interactions, location based data, etc are also available, a skillful source of data for preparation ML algorithms on real real-life information. Periodicity analysis and seasonal variations are some of the studies that I would surely look into.
I'chiliad currently reading the volume 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Reading this book after completing Sapiens, another volume by the same writer, just opens upwards your mind about how much the human race has evolved. How much it has changed, for better or worse. How the human race, which once tamed jungles and animals and built tools to help civilizations abound, is now existence held convict by the very tools its creating. The pace at which innovation is burgeoning cannot exist stopped and neither should it exist, simply nosotros as humans must exist vary about the unintended ill-effects that these means of convenience pose to us, as individuals and as a society.
Fin.
Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/andorid-activity-1ecc454c636c
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