Keep Screen Time history past four weeks

Steps

1. Press “connect” on the Screen Time card. The panel opens in the Knowledge folder where macOS keeps Screen Time: press “Select this folder”.
2. Press “select export folder” and choose a folder like ~/Documents/screen-time.
3. Tick the days you want before the first sync: on the free allowance, the 10 newest days ticked at that first sync are your free days, and they stay fixed.
4. Press “sync now”.
5. Unlock Screen Time so every new day is written, and turn on Settings > “launch at login”. While Exporter runs it adds the new days, at most once a minute.

What you get

~/Documents/screen-time/
  2026-08-31.md
  2026-09-01.md
  summary.md

One file per day, with the totals in the front matter and four tables: apps used for a minute or more, websites, notifications per app, and when the screen was on.

total_screen_time: "3h 51m"
apps_used: 4
domains_visited: 2

summary.md adds up top apps and daily totals over the recent weeks. Exporter never deletes a day file, so the folder keeps growing after macOS forgets the old days.

Pitfalls

• The folder is the only copy of the days macOS deleted. Back it up, and never press “full resync” on it: that removes the day files Exporter wrote and exports only what macOS still has.
• Days macOS deleted before you exported them cannot be exported.
• Without the unlock, new days stop after the free ten.

The fields and the fixes are in the Screen Time docs.