Overview

Originally developed by students and researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, the ScreenLife Capture application is an open-source software suite which allows researchers to collect screenome data from Android smartphones. Screenomes are sequenced high-frequency screenshots of participants’ device use, and a technique to study digital media use pioneered by Reeves and colleagues (2021). For example, the ScreenLife Capture Android application captures a screenshot of a participant’s smartphone use every five seconds. This allows for highly granular data on smartphone use which may be useful for researchers interested in the study of digital media.

ScreenLife Capture is the first freely available and open-source screenome collection tool for researchers. The application is free to download, edit, and use for academic research purposes. Please cite this paper if you are using it for your own research projects:

Yee, A. Z. H., Yu, R., Lim, S. S., Lim, K. H., Dinh, T. T. A., Loh, L., Hadianto, A., & Quizon, M. (2023). ScreenLife Capture: An open-source and user-friendly framework for collecting screenomes from Android smartphones. Behavior Research Methods, 55(8), 4068–4085. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-02006-z

Sequential screenshots can be analyzed in different ways. One representation of the data include: From Yee et al., (2023)

Screen Life Demo

1-hour Sample of Screenomics Data

What do young people do on their smartphones? Everything. Our - and other scholars' - research shows that smartphone use is incredibly heterogenous, and there is research examining its effects need to find a way to capture that complexity. ScreenLife Capture allows researchers to do that. It allows reseachers to record different dimensions of smartphone use, including:

  • Screen activity and app usage
  • Actual content
  • Interaction patterns
  • App switching
  • Timestamps

The GIF on the left showcases one hour's worth of smartphone data collected through the app, highlighting the different research questions surrounding smartphone use that can be addressed through screenomes.

Installation

The latest and most complete code, as well as set-up instructions, are available on GitHub:

View on GitHub

Support

While we strive to keep the latest version of the code as up-to-date and error-free as possible, we are a very tiny academic team that operate on the funding we can secure. Hence, updates may not be as often as we want it to be. If you face any issues, drop me a note at andrew.yee@ntu.edu.sg, and I will try to address it when I can. We are constantly looking for volunteers who are open to keeping this software up-to-date and working, so please also drop me an email if you are keen. As of October 2025, the application is still being actively supported and used in our research studies.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.