Apps I use often
Going to Settings –> Battery on your iPhone and then selecting Last 7 Days gives you a reasonable indication of what apps you used most often. If you then tap on one of the apps or the clock icon, it will show you both how many hours that app was on screen and how much the app was running in the background.
On my phone I had Twitter open for 4.7 hours in the last 7 days. That's 40 minutes on average each day! Next up is the web browser, with 2.5 hours on screen in total. Tile, a Bluetooth tracker I use with my car keys and house keys, ran for 3.9 hours in the background. The Photos app somehow used 6% of my battery life while being open 5 minutes in total. Weird!
I had my podcast player, Overcast, running for about 1.5 hours in the background, usually while walking or going for a run. My VPN software, OpenVPN, which I use when I connect to WiFi away from home, also used around 4% of battery life. Spotify was running for 1.7 hours in the background, while Headspace was running for 1.2 hours in the background.
I use Pocket to bookmark things I want to read on the iPad later, Apple Notes to store random stuff and the standard Apple Mail app for e-mail. For instant messaging I rely on iMessage and WhatsApp. I also use TransferWise for foreign exchange and Parcel for tracking packages. All these apps used around 1-2% battery life and were on screen for five minutes or less each.
It doesn't look like any apps that use less than 1% of battery life are shown. These include:
- banking apps
- Kisi – used to unlock doors at the co-working space
- 1Password – password manager
- 1Blocker – ad blocker
- Starbucks – for getting free coffees on Vitality
- Three – to top-up airtime credit
- Vitality – insurance rewards app
- Streaks – for tracking habits
- Pure Planet – logging electricity & gas usage
That's more than twenty five apps I use on regular basis! I wonder if all of them are available on Android, in case I want to switch away from the Apple ecosystem? And will there be reasonable replacements if I would switch to a real Linux phone like the Librem 5 in future? And which ones will I just have to go without?