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Comment by Scaevolus | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't account for apps that are unusually efficient. My bus app allows shortcuts on the home screen to arrival times for a stop, so each day I spend under a minute with it open, yet it's a better app than a clumsy interface that would waste two minutes.

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I think this would still address that (and I mention this in another response below).

As someone deciding between the two, I will see that you keep coming back to the app, even if you don't use it for a very long time.

Versus the other app that you averaged a longer session, but stopped using after a shorter period.

We'd have to be careful of apps that game the system by installing some super-small/innocuous service that would hit Google Play once/day just to keep your usage statistics falsely high -- even when you don't open the app yourself.

I don't know enough about the guts of Android to be sure you could do this, but it seems likely.

Ideally, usage would be handled by the OS, and it could actually distinguish between running in the background vs. being active. Background usage would be discarded, ideally.

Not necessarily. What if your app comes with a widget (or tile for Windows Phone apps) that tells you all the information you need. I'd have that visible at all times and would never need to open the app itself.

I have an iPhone, so I'm not sure how they're generally used.

But I would assume that if you have a widget docked, then you are likely getting some use of it, and if not, you will undock it (and maybe also delete it).

So there is still a level of usage you could measure from widgets, though maybe not quite as meaningful as that you get from regular apps.

There are some apps that I almost never open, because I get _all_ of the utility of the app from the push notifications. Two examples are:

- Pushover

- CN Air Quality

The stats can include how many average push notifications they send over a time. If they send a lot, but you keep the app installed for a long time then you like the push notifications and that would show in the stats.

I think that's something that could certainly be accommodated by an algorithm developed to give an aggregate 'score' for apps. Certainly the fact that the app is used every single day, regardless of how long, would be a very big plus for its rating.