I am fairly sure I don’t have aphantasia, but for me there’s no visual component to daydreaming - it’s purely just zoning out and later realizing I’d lost track of time. It’s so interesting to hear about how other people’s minds work totally differently from that.

Don't believe everything people say. It is very hard for people to report their inner processes correctly.

I completely agree — all of our minds work slightly differently and thus using language to describe one’s internal loop is necessarily fraught with translation error.

With that said, this report came from a close relative who had no idea that aphantasia was a thing. We started with the experiment: “imagine a barn, what color is it and how many windows does it have?” and then proceeded to dive into the limits of their capabilities (e.g. detail is often absent or brushed over, while some things are quite vivid like people’s faces).

Her report was quite different from others I’ve spoken with, so it certainly seems like there’s a spectrum to the experience of phantasia.