Learn how to reduce the amount of time you spend on Instagram by seeing your daily usage and setting a daily time limit. Once you cross that limit, the app will remind you to close it.
As we all know, social media sites and apps can be huge time sucks. You jump on to wish someone a happy birthday, and before you know it, you’ve wasted an hour of your workday browsing your feed.
You can use tools like Screen Time to limit the time you spend on specific apps. But Instagram brings its own built-in tool to the app. This tool doesn’t technically limit the time you spend on Instagram, but reminds you that you’ve been using it long enough.
View how much time you spend on Instagram
Whenever you use the Instagram app on your iPhone, the time you spend with the app is logged. To view your activity, open the app and follow these steps:
- Go to your profile screen and tap the hamburger menu icon at the top.
- Tap Time management or Your activity > Time spent.
- You’ll see a nice column chart that displays your average time on Instagram each day. You’ll see an overall average at the top and can touch and hold a particular day to see the amount of time for that day.
Set a daily limit for Instagram usage
The app can also help you limit the time you spend here by sending you a reminder to close the app.
- Go to Instagram settings and tap Time management.
- Tap Daily limit and choose a time period: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hours.
When 5 minutes remain of your daily time limit, Instagram will send a silent in-app notification, as shown below.
After you’ve used the app for that amount of time, Instagram will block everything on the screen with a full-screen message. You can close the app or tap More Options and choose an option there.
Get reminders to take regular breaks from Instagram
Earlier versions of Instagram had this feature, but it has now been removed. You could tap Break reminder on the Time Spent screen and choose to get reminders every 10, 20, or 30 minutes to leave the app and take a break. Among other things, taking periodic breaks is good for your eyes. Sadly, this thoughtful feature is no longer available.
What do you think about the Instagram daily reminder? Is this a feature you’ll try, or do you already make sure you don’t spend too much time with the app? Let us know!
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