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We just got our 11yo set up with Minecraft Java Edition on Ubuntu 20.04 and he's thrilled, but we had gotten used to the screen time monitoring we had available on his iPad, when that was his only option. I'm trying to find another solution that will let him and us see how he's spending time on his laptop.

For the kid, I'd like him to be able to check on how much time he's spent on Minecraft. This can be something we look at together to talk about how he spending time, it doesn't need to be something that will lock him out when his time is up or something I control remotely.

I'd also love to track time on social media for both of us. On his iPad we can see how much time he spends on sites like YouTube and TikTok where he can fall down a real rabbit hole and not even realize he spent two hours watching videos.I'd love a snapshot of how much time I'm spending on my own rabbit hole sites.

Is there a way to track either time in apps or time with specific domains open, at the user level?

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    Interesting question... I would suggest you remove the "minecraft" tag as I guess any type of monitoring would do -- not specific to minecraft. That might open it up to more people willing to answer you? My only suggestion is the workrave software. It's not exactly what you want. It's for people suffering from or who would like to prevent RSI. It does seem to have a calendar that records usage information, as shown in the link. Hopefully someone else can give you a better option.
    – Ray
    Commented Apr 29, 2021 at 16:30
  • @Ray if someone is searching and explicitly excluding the minecraft tag, I'm not sure what to think. But on the off chance that someone out there has a minecraft-specific answer, that would solve half my problem.
    – Amanda
    Commented May 1, 2021 at 15:17

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There is also an app called ActivityWatch that may be interesting.

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  • This looks perfect. I'm a bit wary of installing something like this from a zip file (vs a repo) but I'll contemplate that.
    – Amanda
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 18:53
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Ubuntu actually has some documentation on parental controls, which you can find here; https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ParentalControls

If you and your kid has a Steam account, or plan on getting them one soon, Steam has something along the name of "Family View" (I don't remember the exact name) mode, but I don't know how well it works, but it could help. Keep in mind Steam is a 13+ platform, although your kid should be fine as long as they stay on the safer side. I know many people that play Minecraft also enjoy Roblox (including me!), but unfortunately Roblox can't run under Linux if he wants to play that (even with Wine)

There's also "Edubuntu" (formerly Ubuntu Education Edition), but I don't know much about Edubuntu, and I would recommend against it as it hasn't had a new release in over 4 years.

Mind the Time is a Firefox Extension that provides some time tracking. It's not listed in the Ubuntu Parental Controls but is a good way to track the sites you're spending time.

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    Interesting. I'll take a look.
    – Amanda
    Commented Apr 29, 2021 at 22:31

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