Delete or hide life-wasting apps
practicalbetterments.com
practicalbetterments.com
I recently had to do this with YouTube because YouTube Shorts were getting very addictive. I still use YouTube on my computer, but my overall usage is significantly down.
I wasn't able to get a decent set of rules to hide shorts on the page and ended up using a plugin (no affiliation): https://github.com/Vulpelo/hide-youtube-shorts
I mostly use Youtube now on the Apple TV but recommendations are so awful, I only spend about a few minutes a day.
On mobile I use "One Sec" [2], which injects a short delay before opening any apps you specify. The delay is configurable; from a few seconds, to half a minute.
It's impressive how only 3-4 seconds are enough to re-engage your prefrontal cortex and make you think -- "wait a minute, why am I opening this app again?".
I still subscribe to channels that I like and respect, but not being subject to the toxic injection of YouTube shorts or recommendations drastically cuts down on my dwell time in that app.
I do log on occasionally but it's only ever to ask a specific question or look at a game thread for one of the sport team I follow, and that is only once a week for a couple minutes. Hope I never go back to being a regular redditor.
What do you study, that works well on a small device?
My attempts to learn/study usually lead to opening a web browser, which leads me to dozens of tabs of tangents.
My wife OTOH almost fully operates on her phone. Her phone efficiency makes me feel like a smart phone luddite hah.
However, there are tons of great content linked from this site alone that doesn't require any hands on to understand. Get a few ebooks too, and you're set. But I'm general I don't sit on my phone a lot because I have kids, this is a 5-10 mins a couple times a day thing. Not long stretches at all.
I've been trying to kick Reddit for _years_.
The problem is that it actually has good content for niche interests. It constantly comes up in Google searches and about 50 - 60% of the time it either gives the answer or opens a deeper query.
I wish I could export all the knowledge from it and not have to unblock that terrible site. The smaller, focused subs aren't the problem, it's the entire frontpage and all the rest of the subreddits. It's somehow worse than junk food like I'd categorize other social media, it's like a hammer to the skull.
Somehow Stack Overflow is more a barren wasteland than Reddit, and Quora is even worse.
This helps me avoid mindless browsing on reddit.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... [2] https://www.inoreader.com/
I don't know. Even smaller subs like homenetworking are full of single-picture posts with a title like "what this?" "how fix?" and so on.
People don't even take the time to research a little bit, instead they snap a photo and hope for someone to think for them.
Browsing niche subs nowadays is embarassing, really.
Surprisingly, 'one sec' is free, even though I remember paying for it around ~4 years ago, at some point the developer shifted to a subscription-based model, though it is entirely optional. There might be similar apps on the market too, or you can even try crafting your own iOS Shortcut. Overall, I highly recommend giving this a shot before diving in and uninstalling apps outright.
[0]: https://one-sec.app
https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Phone-Dumb-Yourself-Addiction/d...
If anyone has some tips that have worked for them please share! Here are ways I've found that help on iphone:
1. Delete all time wasting app.
2. Delete all browsers on your phone (disable safari in screentime). If you "really need" some content there will be an app, or RSS feed you can tap into to get it. A light version of this would be using screentime privacy restrictions and only allowing the websites you want to view.
3. Turn off your ability to install apps in screentime so you don't install the time-wasters.
4. Have a family member/friend add the screentime passcode so you don't know it and can't turn it off when you get the first itch.
5. Put your phone in black/white mode and turn down the contrast. The apps you do have won't be as intoxicating visually so you'll spend more time in the real world.
On Windows, it is at C:\Windows\Windows32\drivers\etc\hosts
In the hosts file, you put `0.0.0.0 <site you don't want to visit>`. Now whenever you go to that site, it just doesn't exist and if you _have_ to open it, you need to go comment out the line in the hosts file.
It's frequently enough friction but you have to remember to uncomment the line after you are done.
You can do the same for mobile but it involves setting up a VPN. That is how the paid apps that do the same work.
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Also at the end of each day, do a reflection and ask yourself "What would I have done differently today?" or some variation. That frequently gives a stopgap where I resolve myself to do things different the next day.
It sucks to lose a few hours, it really sucks to lose a few days just because you fell into a rut.
- I wrote this program[1] to time-lock things. It time-lock encrypts data to a desired time interval. In order to access the data, you need to decrypt it on the same machine you encrypted for the set amount of time. This works because the encryption algorithm is mathematically unparallelizable one.
- I use a Bluetooth keyboard emulator[2] on my computer to enter digits for passwords without seeing them. Long passwords I can enter by hands since I won't be able to remember them but for short passwords (the SIM and Screen time password) this is necessary.
1. Create another Apple ID with a separate phone number than your normally used number. Set the Apple ID password to some random thing. Enable Recovery Key. Lock the SIM card with a random password. You aren't supposed to remember any of these passwords.
2. Put all these passwords to a file and encrypt it with a random number key. Time-lock this key.
3. When setting up screen time restrictions, set up this Apple ID as the recovery account for your Apple ID.
4. Generate a random 4-digit password and put it into a file. Use the Bluetooth keyboard emulator to enter it on your iPhone without seeing it. Time-lock this password.
Done! Now the only way to change screen time settings is to crunch numbers with your computer/VPS for 8 hours.
My restriction settings are:
- All social media apps and HN[3] are collectively limited to 25 mins/day but I will probably set it to 30mins/week as I see I miss nothing.
- Downtime set for sleeping hours.
- Necessary apps which also enable me to waste time (e.g. Safari) are time-restricted.
- New app installation disabled.
I also use a simple shell script with a systemd unit that shuts down the computer if it's being used outside allowed hours. Obviously I need to not be in sudo/wheel group for this to work, so the script gives me sudo access for certain early hours every day.
1: https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock
2: There are afaik no solutions that currently work on Linux except writing your own, and the ancient one I run in an Ubuntu 16.04 VM. There are many apps for mobile, recommend Bluetouch for iOS. Supposedly RPi Zero W can do it too.
3: All my friends are on social media, I’m not and I find I lose nothing. Admit it, it’s collective reciprocal FOMO about each other’s lives. Twitter and reddit are not to be used regularly, they are skinner boxes. I log in to both only when I have a question to ask to a community/someone. Regarding HN, I find high amounts of daily input even if it's high-quality discussion lead to worse memory and concentration.
It is, remind yourself that this is what you are doing and embracing. I am by no means sympathetic to a straight edge perspective, but when ever you find yourself pointlessly clicking clickbait and other garbage to get your dopamine fix, remind yourself that this is what you are doing.
You are sniffing glue right now. Its not healthy and does produce long term damages. You are grilling your attention span and are hanging around with other addicts.
All the power to you if that is your goal, but it should be your goal and not something you got suckered into. Embrace it or leave it.
So, what do you say, you wanna do another line of youtube shorts? Or are you bored already and are up for some old school c̶r̶a̶c̶k̶ imageboards? You said you arent a cop, right?
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hVd4CI39ouw/VsoH0MP7M9I/A...
edit: The Jeffrey comparison is also very valid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEtBDQDkEXc
Now in some cases that may be harder to do. If one has a food addiction or a smartphone related addiction for example. But in those cases you can certainly cold quit certain addictive foods or apps. When people “cold turkey” quit unhealthy addictive foods people often say they these people are “on a diet.” But really what is going on is that these people have “cold turkey” quit eating the bad foods and only eat healthy foods.
Do the same with the internet. Cold turkey quit the addictive unhealthy junk apps like a food dieter would cold turkey quit eating addictive unhealthy junk food. Only use the internet STRICTLY for work/school or direct 1 to 1 communication with a loved one such a friend or a family member.
That’s how you stop spending time on the addictive feed.
Some people say that they have to use Facebook for work/school or whatever. In that case just treat it like email. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Use Facebook on your laptop (NOT your phone) for 5 minutes in the morning and then for 5 minutes in the afternoon. If you do this you can still use it for whatever without being addicted to the feed.
Haven't you gone on to prove yourself wrong by mentioning food diets? Many/most of which are not quitting something cold turkey?
Unless you're going to tell me that e.g. 'intermittent fasting' is quitting eating on Wednesdays or 0000-2200h cold turkey, like that was the addiction.
Many of us have no issue eating the occasional nacho or chocolate cake or drinking a coke here and there. Other people do have issues controlling their intake of these junk foods. I meant that people quit the junk food “cold turkey.”
So the digital analogue is quitting the “junk apps” in a cold turkey kind of way….
- 95% of content and posts have no value and are simply a waste of time
- Using any of the usual platforms for more than 10 minutes will damage me and make me a worse person (mental health, attention span, it makes me angry, etc...)
- Basically the only reason why I use those services is to kill time and to avoid responsibilities which I have in the real world
- All of those services have net negative effect on society and humanity and by using them I support a system which I despise
To summarize roughly: There is simply no value in using any of these platforms. Doing virtually anything else will be better for me and the world.
Once I really accepted those facts it was not really that hard to stop using them. The problem was that for a long time I told myself (at least subconsciously) that there is some value in using some of those services.
For example I told myself "I'm really exhausted now and I wouldn't be doing anything productive anyways, so I might aswell doomscroll for a bit." Or "There really is some high quality content on YouTube, it'd be a shame to miss the quality videos if I abandon the platform as a whole."
You need to get to a point where your brain immediately calls bullshit as soon as you come up with an excuse like this.
Edit: formatting
Sure there is a lot of garbage on YouTube, but it's fairly easy to avoid the dark alleys.
I ~~deleted~~ each of my pictures from my permanent record. Facebook had become an uncomfortable place. I had to get rid of it.
Sad, but fortunately not true at all. Recall that people made friends for hundreds of thousands of years before social media apps.
"Ahh, but if all your friends are on social media apps, you can't hang out with them if you aren't on social media apps too!"
Not true either. I have been off Facebook and Twitter since 2008, and never got on anything newer than that. If you count HN, then that's your choice, but I don't have an app for it, and at any rate none of my friends are here. There are no barriers stopping you and your friends from hanging out in a world without social media apps, apart from inertia and some behavior patterns that look a lot like addiction from the outside. Also, there is no difficulty in communicating with people, or scheduling activities with them either. In fact if you find literally any other shared medium of communication, you will be more in touch with them than you are now.
So, don't hide your apps, delete them, pausing only to delete your accounts first, so you can never go back to them.
If you want to break the habit of going somewhere through the address bar, edit your /etc/hosts file so that address points back to localhost.
0.0.0.0 reddit.com
0.0.0.0 old.reddit.com
Still, I can use the search bar of youtube, and I can access single Reddit post (from a google search for example).
Now you’ll be limited to one minute a day of HN. If you set 20 minutes it also gives you 5 minute warnings, and lets you extend.
The App Limiting has a nice feature were if you set a limit on multiple apps at the same time, it doesn’t matter which app/site you use, the time counts against them all. This prevents you from wasting time in one app, then rolling onto the next distraction.
The only resisting application is whatsapp, used by unfortunately everyone.
I just wish there was still a way to allow apps to show notifications.
I encourage to consider delete the account before delete (uninstall) the app.