I have an older smartphone with limited storage, so I haven't been able to put things like YNAB (or DropBox) on it. So, I wasn't able to enter at the point of each transaction, so did so at the end of each day.
Here's how the consciousness-raising aspect of about 10 months of daily-manual-entry did for me:
-made me shop less in general, because I knew I'd have to enter another transaction later!
-got me going for groceries less often (see above), because I especially hated entering those receipts
-going for groceries less often got me more immediately honest about what I was really spending per week in my worst area
-showed me hundreds (!) of dollars (on a $1500/mo budget) in overcharges in one month alone, and got them back
-got me keen to reduce internet and phone costs
-helped me see where some subsidies I was eligible for would be worth pursuing
-inspired a personal embarrassment about, and subsequent end to, auto-payments I was making for no real reason
-inspired me to avoid the higher rents I was tempted by, and to instead aim for an even lower one
-let me avoid feeling sick at the end of each month about the "surprise" amounts spent
-let me adjust my practices from any point in the month instead of "starting again next month"
-encouraged me to sell some of my stuff to make my income cover my poorly-planned expenses in a month
With no real effort whatsoever, the practice brought my monthly budget down from about $3000/mo (which I didn't actually have in income) to $1700/mo (and now even less). These were areas I was certainly conscious of, but not hyper-conscious of. It moved me out of wishful thinking, a "longterm" approach in which I could tell myself the money would eventually show up, fantasy-based spending, etc.
I totally agree that one might eventually outgrow an approach like YNAB -I mean, it certainly could be used forever, but I know I've recently moved to downloading the transactions and to an annual budget approach to my YNAB, but this is what it did for me in the first stretch.