Why is screentime and app usage reporting different numbers? [duplicate]

I have screentime set up for managing apps and usage and am having a hard time making sense of the numbers.

In this instance I have set all apps to be limited to 2 hours, and you can see that the time used is around that amount (I changed the limit to 30 minutes just before this screenshot because I was experimenting). However, the used time is nearly 5 hours.

Why does my screentime report 4:42 and usage continues without hindrance. Changing it down to 30 minutes hinders usage but to allow later usage, I have to allow > 4:42. This is inconsistent with the app usage and makes management difficult. What’s being counted and why does it vary so wildly?

Solution 1:

If you click the blue "SHOW CATEGORIES" button, you'll see the categories listed in the list at the bottom of the screen. You can see what usage is labelled as Social, Education and Creativity - the rest of your usage is shown as the grey bar.

This can include for example having the phone displaying the lock screen or the home screen. It does not count as time for any particular app, and thus do not interfere with your app limits - but it is still counted as time the phone is displaying something.