Turn Your iPhone into a Dumb Phone
dumbph.com
dumbph.com
Even a small amount of friction to getting to slot machine apps does wonders for reducing the amount of time spent on them. But likewise it’s nice (and useful) to still have access to these apps for some people so deleting isn’t a viable option.
Like any other “everything in moderation” suggestion if it’s not all or nothing, just use self control, the internet hates on it.
Turning off notifications is stupidly simple to a fault. Sorry, people can’t just turn off notifications from their spouses or day care apps or school/kids’ phone numbers or other important stuff like that.
But this article doesn’t really get into the stuff that the OS has built-in to manage notification priority, it just tells you to turn it all off as if they’re telling the government to print more money to end poverty.
Kind of crazy that a blog post on this subject doesn’t even mention the Screen Time feature.
My version has maps, kindle, texting, phone, Spotify, camera, and the podcasts app.
Perfect for running errands or going to the park with my toddler and still being reachable.
You might have been able to get a call at work from your kid's school, but depending on your job, maybe not.
“Apple fortunately makes it straightforward to manage your notifications via Settings > Notifications — you can customize your notification preferences per-app, and if you’re on iOS 15 or later, you can also schedule a notification summary.”
>Kind of crazy that a blog post on this subject doesn’t even mention the Screen Time feature.
“using the native iOS screen-time feature or more advanced apps like Opal and Jomo to regulate your usage of them.”
Why ? I only have notifications (on Android) for phone, messages and Whatsup.
An app needs a very good reason to display notifications.
Besides that, I have been disabling Notifications for ages, and that is the one decision that I believe was one of the best decisions of my phone life. I wrote an article in 2014[1] that needs a serious update, but it still makes sense.
Make it a habit to turn off Notifications as soon as you install a new app unless they are critical, such as Medical or Kid/school-related.
My Home page has a minimal wallpaper that I did a few years back, and it stayed. I usually leave one row at the bottom for beta-testing and region-specific Apps I use while traveling.
Of course, none of the Social Media Apps are on my phone. I checked my screen time to include this comment, and I've 37 minutes Daily Average. So, on most usage, I should still likely be averaging less than an hour daily.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...
I just did it and it’s very simple:
- in the Shortcuts app, go to Automations
- add a new one and pick “App” as the trigger
- choose the apps you want color in and pick “run immediately” and on open and close
- on the next screen pick “new blank automation”
- in the new shortcut add “Set Color Filters” and set to toggle
You can also make different automations for open and close, but toggle works as long as you toggle the effects manually. But in this case you can just toggle it back manually.
Even though phone manufacturers and service providers are doing everything they can to limit the availability of smaller, reasonably sized phones.. even the huge phone I get forced into using is just incredibly frustrating to browse the web with. Besides the usual gdpr harassment taking up a third of every screen, mobile just increases the thirsty demands for me to install apps, etc.
Might as well drive home the point that friction is inevitable rather than making it easier to start an interaction that’s only going to annoy me. If I need to do anything other than view simple text, I already know I’ll have to get out the laptop
I had the same annoyance as you, switching back and forth wasn't pleasant, and I'd forget. I think part of the reason is that switching between 0% <-> 100% saturation doesn't give room to adapt. It feels like a bandwidth of information is missing. But, if the colorspace is barely noticeable, your brain will fill in the colors for you with the information it gets... and the high-saturation default color-set would start to appear abrading and unnatural.
The described solution is just someone procrastinating by spending even more time on their phone trying to customize things and fiddle with apps.
Same category as building a todo app to become more productive or building a blogging engine to write more instead of just writing.
# adb shell
$ pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.android.chrome
$ pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.youtube
$ pm install-existing com.android.chrome
$ pm install-existing com.google.android.youtubeAbjectly false.
Photos and Maps, while deleting the unneeded Google apps, keep the dumb phone from informing third party adtech of your day.
The minimal launcher is cool; this is built in: https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
May as well rename the article to 'how I changed the appearance of my iPhone'.
I also found out the hard way a decade ago that having access to productivity apps such as outlook usually meant to enroll your smartphone as a device managed by your IT and it was a big no to me.
If you don't go after the underlying reason you want to distract yourself from real life by entering the portal in your pocket, all the tips and tricks in the world won't fix the problem.
For a similar need, I turned to a small, portable device, that runs on battery (but not a laptop) to run 24/7.
I got a couple of ipads, but since I can't install some OS that I want (without jumping a million hoops).
So I got myself a HP Elite X2, second-hand, and it is GREAT. Then I wanted a second one, I couldn't find another HP Elite X2 (at the same price) so I got a Dell Latitude 2-in-1 (basically a Win tablet).
Basically I want something to run 24/5, so even if there is a power disruption (maintenance on building, etc.) my downtime would be the 2-3 minutes until my router/wifi reconnects. (we get some once every couple of weeks and a desktop wouldn't reboot)(and I didn't want a laptop as I don't want any fans/movable/mechanical components).
I've build custom base to keep them upright --> =|=|= so they can 'breathe' well, and stay cool.
I also got a KVM so I got all my devices hooked on it, so when I do need to do some work on them I can do it with my big screen/keyboard/mouse. I only remember to dust them every couple of weeks, and they are golden!
Of course lobbying politicians is an absurd path to running an iPad as a server, but the other options I know of are becoming a politician and campaigning against large corporations, or advocating for change and getting enough people to care that politicians bend to the will of the people rather than the corporations. Out of the three options, writing a check to buy legal change seems to be the easiest way.
Do you know of any other ways I haven't mentioned to use an iPad as a server? Or are you sticking to the "you're holding it wrong" approach?
Yes, I will stick to that approach. Let's move things forward, life is short. My motorcycle has a front wheel and is therefore technically a wheelbarrow. If Yamaha is not interested in helping me transform it into a functional wheelbarrow, should I lobby congress or maybe hold the president hostage, or should I go out and buy one of the many quality wheelbarrows on sale – even if none of them are from the brand Yamaha that I personally prefer?
Do you have a major financial interest in people not being able to use their computers for computing? I don't understand why you are so against this.
But, seriously, I've tried launchers, leechblock, and other software solutions. For me, they don't work long term because I end up just reverting and unblocking. I always have some justification in my head as to why I need to reinstall Discord or browse YouTube and then it's over.
For me, I've had much better luck with a device where those types of slips are impossible. Mostly... although sometimes I really do need a smartphone to scan a QR code or to pay a foodtruck with Venmo.
The Jelly Star seems to be the best compromise for me so far. It's still a smartphone, but the screen is so small that it's a lot harder to be on it for hours.
In this case, by limiting your phone usage, you need to try to fill the open void with something more interesting. If you do so, then returning to using phone will feel like just using another tool.
Doesn't matter if it is for menus, ordering, or payment. Nuts to that.
it will not, however, stop the deliberate decisions to procrastinate, as you said
https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welc...
It has some major limitations though, like you can’t zoom into photos, and you can’t use Bluetooth headphones or AirPlay.
Another solution is to just use an apple watch with cellular as your primary phone. It has everything you need (spotify, imessage, etc.) but nothing that distracts you like youtube, tiktok etc.
Although it could be argued that the question does not make a lot of sense. A browser is a tool. Is a kitchen knife a murder weapon? Not per se, but it can be.
Also interestingly enough text-based social media (HN, Reddit, Bluesky, X) addict me way more than video based ones (like Tiktok, Youtube, or Instagram) do. I don't know if it's because it takes longer to digest the information through video than text but I do know that I have no problem with looking at pictures and videos and stopping for days/weeks, but once I get hooked on text it's really hard to stop. I even spent a year in middle school addicted to reading books though I had other things going on in my life at the time and books were a bit of an escape. I've had waves of HN addiction and definitely enjoy X and Bluesky because of the textual media of the experience.
As an adult I mostly grew out of these addictions but I can still feel their pull on me. Luckily I have enough going on in my offline life that digital life takes a backseat.
If you want to think of these in terms of "algorithms", then IRC and Usenet have a simple "chronological" algorithm to display posts while Reddit and HN use an "upvote" based engagement algorithm. X and more "modern" social networks may use more sophisticated algorithms but they're all just algorithms to return a sorted order of items.
Social media was coined in the mid 2000s to separate new platforms built on social graphs and old platforms like forums. You do not follow individuals on Hacker News.
It is a pity that it is not as well thought out as it appears. For example, the suggestion to remove system applications will almost immediately lead to a bootloop.
I, for example, have a hard time imagining how to protect elderly parents from a text message that will send them a link that, when clicked, will bombard them with suggestions to enable notifications, and then notifications will bombard them with suggestions to do something else.
Together with taming notifications this provides enough friction to discourage me from reaching for it at every spare second.
Once the phone reaches my hands the tricks in the post are not enough to remove the need for conscious effort to let go of the thing and put it back in its inconveniently positioned place.
I don’t mean turning off the notifications isn’t going to work. It would, and I highly recommend turning off everything, but the urgent stuff. You’ll notice you won’t miss what you truly need anyway. And you still may distract yourself, when you want it.
It's sort of like people with clinical depression. Advice from people who're not clinically depressed is often terrible, because it's stuff that'll work great if you're a neurotypical person. And it's legitimately hard to get in the mindset of someone whose brain works differently than yours for things like this, and understand what's incredibly difficult for them despite being trivial for you.
E ink phone Android app showcase | Hisense A9 review https://youtu.be/dvO9ScTdwz8
I recently finished Atomic Habits and these actions pair well with it. Especially the points about making the bad habits less accessible and make them less satisfying.
The reason I buy an iPhone is that I want all the non dumb things. If I wanted all the dumb stuff I'd just not bother.
So there is a case of having the capabilities of the smartphone but not wanting the distraction that are part of the ecosystem. In my own experience, I don't have any social media accounts anymore except one one the fediverse but I only access it from the browser and don't get distracted by notifications.
I just wish there was an easy way to mute everyone but a selected number of contacts (you can sorta do it but you need to go through all your contacts, it doesn't work for unknown numbers or for calls). The only real people I want a phone/message tone is my partner, my daughters and their school numbers[1]. I want everyone else to be silent and when calling being redirected to voicebox immediately.
[1] which doesn't work as usually people from school use their private smartphones.
In my case I both set a daily time limit and block certain apps to only certain hours of the day
I haven’t tried their lock down mode yet whatever it’s called.
Great for reading and text. Terrible for videos and scrolling. Here’s a video of me using one:
E ink phone Android app showcase | Hisense A9 review https://youtu.be/dvO9ScTdwz8
The always-on display simply showed a small Whatsapp icon. No need to unlock your phone or check an app for messages. Only unlock it at all if you have a message. Ignore the message without reading its contents. And, as LineageOS/cyanogenmod can, disable notifications also in the status bar. Use Google Maps or your train ticket app without being interrupted by the status bar icons/notification center. "Do not disturb" really means you won't get any notifications. 1-click toggle.
iOS on the other hand, I haven't even found a way to make notifications silent while making calls ring. (Apart from toggling notification settings for 30 apps individually!)
In iOS you can use a Focus mode. You can either "Silence Notifications From" to blacklist or "Allow Notifications From" to whitelist (then don’t whitelist any to silence all).
"Perhaps, like most people, you need a smartphone to fully engage with society (like with QR menus, the bane of the dumbphone life!)."
As for TOTP - this one is very universally doable on desktop, like with KeepassXC. Or you're talking about logging in outside your home, like in a library or computer club?
It boggles my mind that so much innocuous activity got sucked into smartphones. It is not actually more "convenient" to download yet another app that wants access to all my data, just to pay for a parking space, when my credit card is on my person and kiosks do not take up that much space.
And you can also add an accessibility switch with Back Tab to turn this on and off by tapping three times at the back of your iphone.
My personal phone is less so dumb but I follow the YAGNI principle there as well.
That sounds like you should ride a car with a top speed of 50 kmph to control your driving speed.
If you can't concentrate, practice it.
Dumbify is easy enough to set up. It's not always an elegant solution as the list of supported apps is quickly exhausted and required me to make a shortcut. There's a delay and window transitioning from when I tap the link for Anki as Dumbify must first open its app, then go to the shortcut, and then open Anki. Not a huge latency, but noticeable and irksome at times when I want to do a quick search on Firefox. Maybe that's my fault for not trying to deliberately dumb my phone down further to the point where I don't even need a browser. How do we know when we're dumb enough with our phones? What level of distraction is acceptable?
The other major detractor is the fact that instead of seeing my badges on my homescreen, I just flip over one page. Mind you, these are only messenger apps, so that I can at least be reachable by those in my life. I don't have badges enabled on Mail or other apps. I don't have social media accounts, let alone the apps for them, yet my instincts are still to open and flip to the page with the badges. Maybe my behavior will change over time, but I am skeptical it will.
- Never log into an iCloud account
- [optional] don't connect to the internet except for low bandwidth mobile data
Done.
I take your core point but your specific example I think is handled by that.
Using Uber as the example if I turn off Lock Screen notifications and turn on time sensitive notifications then will I get no marketing notifications, and only notifications about my driver turning up?
It's up to the app developer, they get to mark notifications as time sensitive or not. So if someone decides that because a coupon is expiring soon it's "time sensitive" to ping you about it, then they can mark it as such. Hypothetically Apple could frown on this in app review, but it isn't something app reviewers are likely to be able to reliably catch.
Uber eats though, I can never seem to get right, and it tries to spam a lot more. So I still agree with the original point
That’s still miles away from being able to filter or categorize notifications by regexps or keywords at least.
-----
Well, you can do it with apps like FilterBox
Like a few pokemon go add-ons that can read what's on your screen and be a overlay (to distinguish good pokemon from bad)
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/permissions/overv...
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...
Of course if this was exposed then people would start blocking the Google data vaccum - and that's bad for business
one more: account > settings > privacy > offers and promos > allow personalised set to Off
yes, apple needs to fix this.
If I’m an app developer I could just lie and say all my marketing trash notifications are actually time sensitive/important so that you’ll still receive them. Apple has a similar thing and it’s only a soft policy (that an app reviewer would have to catch) that prevents developers from abusing it.
If it really is up to the app developer to categorize their notifications so that you can disable categories, then it sounds like it’s just a simplified way of managing individual apps’ notification preferences, no? (Not that that’s a bad thing, I wish iOS had this.)
Yes, but any popular app will have implemented it.
> If I’m an app developer I could just lie and say all my marketing trash notifications are actually time sensitive/important so that you’ll still receive them
In those cases, your users would come to distrust your app. I reckon, only a negligible percentage of 3b Android users ever turn any notification off. More likely that some have learnt to ignore them altogether (banner blindness); swipe left to dismiss those isn't exactly as hostile as cookie banners are. Or, worse uninstall your "misbehaving" app (some are annoyed by notifications).
There was 1 app in their question.
notifications from a single app are split by category, and you can disable in the phone settings notifications from a single category will keeping the rest for a single app. (though this categorizing is done by the app dev not you, so the dev can mix annoying stuff with the useful)
You have issues with you wasting your life on something like Facebook? Don’t install it. Use browser when needed. Use private tab in Safari, and enter your password each time, so it’s all complicated now. (That’s how I use it, btw.) Same with any other addictives.
Android users, I recommend you to get oLauncher from f-droid/gplay (or better oLauncherCF), and that’s enough already. Hide all the distractions, and Bob’s your uncle.
I have my phones to be the bare minimum pocket computers for years now, and I’m surprised that topic still arises and is actual. Greyscale is bullshit, isn’t it? Has anyone used it seriously for over a couple of days? Even Night Shift is kinda bullshit, in a way. (Better to leave it on, though.) The way is to not use your phone in the night, if you can afford it.
If there’s no nightly drone and missiles attacks from russia in your countries now. So that you need to watch out for Air Raid Alerts 24/7. And your life is at stake. If you’re not there, chances are you can afford to not touch your phone since the evening till the morning. Think of it.
The essential thing isn’t inside your phone, it’s outside of it. It’s you. Work on yourself, and those distractions wouldn’t take you that easily, even when your phone is all flashy and colourful.
I know, we all have that shared problem, but I thought it’s kinda resolved issue for over– for years. Since– idk, 2017?