Your phone can tell you exactly how long you spent on it today. Windows mostly can't. There are a few places to look, but each one only shows part of the picture.
What Windows shows you
Battery usage (laptops and tablets)
On a device with a battery, open Settings → System → Power & battery → Battery usage. You can switch between the last 24 hours and the last 7 days and see how much battery each app used, along with screen-on time.
It's a useful hint, but it measures battery, not attention. It doesn't exist on most desktop PCs, and it doesn't separate the time you were using an app from the time it sat open in the background.
Microsoft Family Safety
If you manage a child's Microsoft account, Family Safety can report their screen time and set limits. It's built for parents, needs a Microsoft account, and sends activity to Microsoft's cloud to work.
Task Manager
Task Manager → App history shows CPU time and network use for some apps. That's how hard an app worked your computer, not how long you used it, so it doesn't answer the screen-time question.
What's missing
None of these answers the simple questions:
- How long was I actually at my PC today, not counting time away?
- Which apps took most of that time?
- How does this week compare with last week?
That's the gap Digital Wellbeing fills on Android and Screen Time fills on iPhone.
Seeing the full picture with Pulse
Pulse is a free, open-source app that adds Digital Wellbeing to Windows 10 and 11:
- Install it from the download page or the Microsoft Store. It doesn't need admin rights or an account.
- Use your PC as normal. Pulse sits in the system tray and counts. After 5 minutes without input it stops counting, unless you're watching or listening to something.
- Open the dashboard to see today's screen time, your top apps and focus, then page back through past weeks.
Everything stays in a local database on your PC. Nothing is uploaded, and there's no telemetry.
Tips for reading your numbers
- Look at the week, not the day. One long day is noise; a pattern across a week is a signal.
- Check app switches, not just hours. Lots of switching often means a scattered day, even if total time looks normal.
- Pick one change. A daily limit on one app or one focus session a day works better than a complete overhaul.
Built into Pulse
Track screen time, focus and breaks on Windows. Free, open source, no account.