iPhone Screen Time: what do the "grey bars" mean?

[geekiemac]

Screen Time is... kinda weird. I have no idea what the "grey" bars mean. Coloured bars usually mean some sort of application category. But the grey bars?
Last night I had a lot of "grey bar activity" (whatever that is). I first thought it might be the iCloud backup, which usually happens over night for me, but this task completed by 1 AM, according to iCloud Backup settings.
After that, I have loads of "pick up" amounting to a total of 3 hours activity ... wtf ??
I woke up this morning at 6 AM to have Screen Time tell me I've already spent 3 hours on the phone "today" when actually I was sleeping from 12 to 6 AM.



Any ideas about what this means? could it be something from another device, i.e. iPad?

 

[WZRD8KD]

Not 100% sure, but I believe the grey bars just mean miscellaneous, anything that doesn’t fit into one of the Categories listed. My best guess is could be Apps refreshing/updating during the night if you have Background App App Refresh turned on.

 

[geekiemac]

Not 100% sure, but I believe the grey bars just mean miscellaneous, anything that doesn’t fit into one of the Categories listed. My best guess is could be Apps refreshing/updating during the night if you have Background App App Refresh turned on.

Thanks for replying ! so this is the weird thing: Background App Refresh has always been turned off for most applications on my iPhone. Also, I wonder why does the phone say there have been dozens of pickups in the middle of the night !

I haven't seen this behaviour again ever since, so let's hope it was a lone false positive.