Keeping up

The day screen is about one day

You set You give for each child. Those are guaranteed minutes for that day. On your child's day, the same setting reads You give 60 min when you have allowed 60 minutes.

If you set You give to 60 minutes, your child can earn 60 more minutes that day, but not more than that. The day never goes past Daily max, and saved-up minutes never raise it.

Where earned minutes come from

There are three ways to earn screen time: the mind game, the daily episode, and chores. When all three are available, each is worth about one third of what can be earned that day, so doing all three earns the whole amount.

With 60 minutes allowed, your child can earn 20 minutes from the puzzle, 20 minutes from the episode, and 20 minutes from chores. If one of those ways is not available that day, for example there are no chores at all, the available minutes are divided between the remaining two.

How the mind game number is decided

Your child gets one puzzle a day, three tries, and 30 minutes of play. If they solve it, they earn that day's puzzle minutes. If they use the tries or the 30 minutes without solving it, they earn no minutes from the puzzle that day.

The puzzle type rotates through fourteen kinds. Difficulty goes up a step after a fully solved three-day block and down a step after three failed days in a row, with the age group limiting how high and how low it goes.

How the episode number is decided

Your child gets one episode a day for their age group, 7‑8 or 9‑11. It has four or five short parts, each with a picture and narration, and the child can read or listen.

At 9‑11 the test has ten questions, one attempt a day, and six right answers are needed to pass (at 7‑8 it is eight questions and five right). During the test, the text and audio are closed. If your child passes, they earn the episode minutes. If they fail, they get no minutes for that episode, and a new episode arrives tomorrow.

Every question is explained afterward either way, with the right answer named and the part of the text it came from.

How chore minutes are decided

A child can have up to three chores. Each chore has a name, an optional note, and the time you expect it to take, from 1 to 240 minutes.

The day's chore minutes are split between today's chores in proportion to the time you set for each one. A longer job is worth more. Doing everything on the list earns all of the chore minutes for that day.

The minutes a chore is worth are fixed when your child starts it. If you change the list while they work, they still get what was promised. Taking longer is fine and changes nothing, which is generous to both slow socks and mysterious dishwasher delays.

What Used means

Used is the screen time spent in limited apps. You choose which apps are limited; ticked means limited, and apps that are not ticked stay open. On Android, a new app starts out limited until you untick it.

Minutes are spent in this order: what you give first, then saved-up minutes, oldest first, then what was earned today. At the end of the day, unused given minutes burn. Unused earned minutes are saved up and stay.

What Saved means

Saved minutes are unused earned minutes from earlier days and from the end of the current day. They stay, but they do not raise Daily max.

Because spending uses given minutes first, a day can add to saved-up minutes even when your child used some screen time. In the 60-minute example, if they earn 60 minutes and use 45 minutes, all 60 earned minutes are saved up because the 45 minutes came out of what you gave.

What Bonus means

You can give 5 to 120 minutes of bonus at any moment, in steps of 5. Bonus opens limited apps for that window on the clock, and your child's own minutes are not spent during it.

Bonus also lifts a closed window while it is running. You can end it early.