How to View Distribution of User Session Durations on an App Screen
How can I see a breakdown of Distribution of duration on an event, ie how many users spent 0-5 mins on an app screen, 5-10 mins and so on
How can I see a breakdown of Distribution of duration on an event, ie how many users spent 0-5 mins on an app screen, 5-10 mins and so on
To see a distribution breakdown of duration on an event (such as users spending 0â5 minutes, 5â10 minutes, etc., on a screen), you can use Custom Buckets on a numeric duration property in the Insights report [Custom Buckets].
Prerequisites
Make sure you are tracking a numeric property on that event (e.g., Screen Duration (minutes) or duration (seconds)).
Method: Custom Buckets on a Numeric Property
Open Insights: Select the event representing your app screen (e.g., Screen View).
Add a Breakdown: Click + Breakdown and select your duration property (e.g., Screen Duration).
Numeric properties in Mixpanel are automatically bucketed into even-sized buckets by default [Numeric Property Use Cases].
Customize the Buckets:
Hover over the property in the Breakdown section, click the overflow menu (three dots), and select Customize Buckets [Custom Buckets].
Choose how you want to bucket the intervals [Numeric Property Use Cases]:
Even Bucketing: Set your bucket size (e.g., 5 minutes) along with your minimum and maximum range boundaries [Numeric Property Use Cases].
Varied Bucketing: Define specific custom ranges if you want varied intervals (such as <5, 5â10, 10â20, etc.) [Numeric Property Use Cases]. Note that the lower bound is inclusive (âĨ) and the upper bound is exclusive (<) [Custom Buckets FAQ].
Apply and Visualize:
Click Apply [Custom Buckets].
Set the event metric to Unique Users (instead of Total Events) to see the count of unique users who fell into each duration bracket.
Switch your visualization to a Bar chart to view the distribution clearly across buckets.
Alternative: Funnels "Time to Convert"
If you are measuring the time spent between two distinct events (for example, Screen Enter â Screen Exit):
Build a Funnel with Step 1 as Screen Enter and Step 2 as Screen Exit [Time to Convert].
Under the Breakdown options, choose Time to Convert between Step 1 and Step 2 [Time to Convert].
You can customize the bucketing or view the Distribution across time ranges (e.g., 0â5 minutes, 5â10 minutes) [Time to Convert; Timeout-Based Sessions].
âšī¸Â Tip: Mention @kapa.ai in the thread for follow-ups or DM the app for 1-to-1 help.
When using a computed Duration property to measure time on an event, "Did not convert" represents users who did not track that same event again [Duration]. Because the Duration computed property calculates the time between two instances of an event (such as successive Page View or Screen View events), users who only tracked the event once without a following occurrence will fall into the "Did not convert" segment [Duration].
âšī¸Â Tip: Mention @kapa.ai in the thread for follow-ups or DM the app for 1-to-1 help.
To see how many users fall into a total duration bucket without relying on return events or conversion, you can use the Aggregate Property per User behavioral property in the Insights report [Discover Insights; Behavioral Properties]. This requires that your screen event already tracks a numeric duration property (such as minutes or seconds spent per view). Here is how to set it up:
Step 1: Set up the Metric
In Insights, select your screen event (e.g., Screen View).
Keep the measurement set to Unique Users to count the number of users [Measurements].
Step 2: Break down by Total Duration per User
Click + Breakdown.
Look under the Computed section and select Aggregate Property per User [Computed Properties; Behavioral Properties].
Configure the aggregation:
Select your screen event (e.g., Screen View).
Select your numeric property (e.g., Screen Duration).
Choose Sum as the aggregation type [Behavioral Properties]. This sums up the total duration across all instances of that event for each user [Aggregate Property per User].
Step 3: Bucket into Time Ranges (0â5 mins, 5â10 mins, etc.)
Numeric breakdown properties are auto-bucketed by default [Numeric Property Use Cases]. To set your exact ranges, click the three dots (overflow menu) on the breakdown property and choose Customize Buckets [Quickstart].
Select either:
Even Bucketing: Set your bucket size (e.g., 5) and minimum/maximum boundaries to create equal brackets like 0â5, 5â10, etc. [Numeric Property Use Cases].
Varied Bucketing: Manually define breakpoint values (e.g., <5, 5â10, 10â20) [Numeric Property Use Cases].
Click Apply [Quickstart].
Switch your chart view to a Bar chart to see the total count of unique users distributed across each total duration bracket.
âšī¸Â Tip: Mention @kapa.ai in the thread for follow-ups or DM the app for 1-to-1 help.