Android’s new ‘Screen Time Reminders’ are my absolute favorite wellbeing feature

Google has been quietly rolling out a new feature to its Digital Wellbeing suite on Pixel and other Android phones called Screen Time Reminders. This feature aims to help users avoid getting sucked into their favorite apps for hours on end, and I’m already 100% on-board with this helpful, non-intrusive feature.

Over the past few days, the new Screen Time Reminders feature has started appearing on a wide range of Android devices, including Google’s own Pixel phones. It’s nestled among the other Digital Wellbeing tools (Settings > Digital Wellbeing and parental controls > Screen time Reminders) and gives you an on-screen reminder when you’ve spent a significant amount of time in a particular app. For me, that means a gentle nudge when I’ve been scrolling X or TikTok a bit longer than I should.

One of my favorite things about it is this reminder pops up even if you haven’t set any app time limits. By default, the feature is turned off, so you’ll need to enable it yourself. But once activated, it displays a small pop-up at the top of your screen after a certain amount of time has passed. It’s been reportedly going off anywhere from 15-25 minutes after being in an any particular app, but I noticed it right around 30 minutes when testing it out with TikTok just blindly running on my desk.

The off/on screen for this feature describes these reminders as “occasional,” so there’s no real way to control their frequency. However, you can disable these reminders on a per-app basis. This is particularly useful for apps where you might be watching videos or playing games, where interruptions can be frustrating. When you enable “Screen Time Reminders,” it’s automatically turned on for all apps. But you can disable it on a per-app basis in the Screen time Reminders section of settings or when the pop-up appears in the app itself.

Google’s Digital Wellbeing tools are available on a variety of Android devices, including those from OnePlus, Oppo, Nothing, and more. Sadly, Samsung users are missing out on this new feature for now. Samsung has its own suite of Digital Wellbeing tools, which differ in functionality, and a “reminders” option isn’t available yet for Galaxy devices as of this post.