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Interesting! I wish Apple would expand on "Assistive Access" mode. - https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-...

They made this for people with cognitive disabilities, but it also works great for older people. It just wouldn't work for me. I need Jira, Slack, and GitHub during work hours for example. But I don't want them during non-work hours. I realize I'm describing something actually doable in the interface now with focus modes and just holding myself accountable by deleting apps like Tiktok, but I do like the idea of having a way to enforce it.

Interesting idea to use Apple Configurator, I like it! I use a combination of uninstalling any interesting apps + Foqos + One Sec + grayscale.

This works pretty well for me, and the key part is Foqos, which is FOSS that allows you to disable certain apps or features with the scan of a QR code or NFC tag. I keep the QR code / NFC tag in a separate building or locked box, so there's real friction if I want to scan it to use the phone beyond basic functionality.

Like the OP, I also have the issue of "semi-important" things, which is mostly email but occasionally some browser thing (often buying or viewing event tickets.) My plan for that is to use Foqos in combination with a QR code + scratch-off sticker, a sort of "break glass in emergency" option that adds some friction but not too much. Print a sheet of identical QR codes, scan it into Foqos as your unlock option, put stickers over them, cut them out and put them in your phone case.

The active readers counter is a trip. I’ve read and viewed graphs depicting how much traffic HN can bring to a web page, but to see it in real time is something else.

My wife and I put parental controls on each others' phones. I turn them off for travel (in case I need something unexpected) and then back on when I get home. It sounds crazy but it works great.

> So far the only real unsolved issue I have are related to “semi-important” apps. Consider email. I still need to have access to email, and I want to have notifications enabled so I don’t miss something truly important. But 90% of the emails I get aren’t important.

> I am not sure what the solution is to these kind of apps. Maybe I can find a special mail app, that only shows you important emails. If I had something like this I think I would just be over the moon with this setup.

I have always had email notifications turned off and I was always missing important emails, especially from people I cared about. I finally figured out the solution. In Gmail (only tested on Android, can't speak for iPhone) I created a label called "notify". I then created filters for specific emails and words that apply the label. You can turn on notifications in Gmail (for Android at least) for specific labels. That's it! Maybe someone else can confirm that this can be done on the iPhone Gmail app? or something similar

In the fight against "Weapons of Mass Distraction" I went to a Qin F21 Pro and used ADB to remove everything distracting.

This might be a way back to the iPhone for me though.

I strongly identify with the author's feeling that their phone had a kind of "gravity" before removing these apps. I described mine to somebody as the sense I was carrying around the ring of power in my pocket. It felt heavy.

If you are in a room full of people and you close your eyes, you still feel the presence of those people and your self-consciousness is thus mobilized. There is something similar going on when I have a phone full of apps. Even when it's off, I can still sense their presence and some part of me is still online, idling and using resources to account for that.

You can achieve the same more easily using Screen Time, and having a trusted friend or partner enter the screen time passcode. Still possible to override with your Apple ID, but this is a significant enough speed bump that it works (for me anyway).

A more lightweight option, though easier to bypass, is to disable apps, App Store, even Safari, with "Content & Privacy Restrictions".

See Settings – Screen Time.

You can use a passcode to lock it. It seems primarily meant for blocking things from your kids.

But it can help turn your iPhone more into a dumb phone

(Blocking safari was the key, for me)

I never really quite got the motivation for this: The much more apparent issue is surely the lack of self-control, right? Which we all do at times.

I'd rather feel confident I'm improving along that metric than to build guardrails for myself everywhere ...

>Maybe you’re at a restaurant and they need you to open a website for example.

Maybe I'll open the door and leave for a different restaurant.

Alternate solution I haven’t seen anywhere else:

1. Screen time to disable browser, App Store etc.

2. Type random 4-digit passwords until you forget.

3. Use your own Apple account as reset.

4. Remove apple password from password manager. Store in “Notes” app or similar on computer.

5. Lock this app storing password behind mandatory typing of gibberish using Cold Turkey on desktop.

Works well for me.

I will mention that as a younger person who grew up with internet access, I get the feeling that the “just be disciplined” comment often comes from people who didn’t have these addictive habits seared into their minds from an early age or have fought them off and forgotten what it’s like to literally lose control of your actions, especially when its normalized around you.

I’ve noticed a lot of older people don’t see the internet as a threat in the same way as I do, and I envy that.

Living with phones like this is completely unnatural.

Thanks for this. I'm setting it up now, works for me as advertised. My screen time jumped a lot in the last couple weeks and my mental health has declined in proportion.

I use Freedom, but it's a bit glitchy and too easy to delete the app if you really want to cheat.

I'm waffling a bit on the default-deny approach to websites. I think that might cause serious headaches since e.g. scanning QR codes to interact with businesses is pretty common. But I will give it a try.

Update: it took me a couple hours to get everything set up the way I like it after resetting the phone, but so far this is fantastic. I also massively restricted notifications, which had gotten a bit out of hand.

I think this guide is nice, and having a variety of articles like this is great so everybody can look at the different ideas and find what's right for them.

I would urge people to consider going a little bit further than this guide, consider not using your phone as a reading device. Imagine deciding to sit down with a physical book, but keeping your phone nestled on the opposite page as you read. It would be a lot nicer to read without interruption, without being exposed to notifications at all times. Sure there are going to be use cases where the phone is more convenient, but I think sacrificing convenience is worth it.

I’m in denial about needing to curb some pretty bad habits so won’t comment on that.

But! I have a fairly “smart” home for controlling my lights, etc. I control it with Siri and the Home app. When friends/family with iPhones stay with me, I just add them as a guest.

Just left town for a few weeks leaving my home & dog to a sitter… with an android. I’ve got an old iPhone that I ended up doing all of the Screen Time/Parental Controls hacks to lock down to must a smart remote. I didn’t love the result. I’m looking forward to using the OP’s post to guide me in making a better dumbphone/smart remote. Thanks!

I'll shout out Clearspace[1]. They're YC W23[2]. I am in no way affiliated with them.

I find the app is very useful. I do find it still takes some discipline, but it adds enough friction into accessing pointless apps, that it makes a real dent in my doom-scrolling. It isn't cheap, but it works well enough that at the current price point, I will pay.

[1] - https://www.getclearspace.com/ [2] - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/clearspace

What’s wrong with Screen Time and having your spouse define the PIN for it? I can request an additional minute myself, but after that only my spouse can grant me an exception.

> It’s common to rack up 4 hours or more of screen time a day on your phone. Here’s one way to see the cost of that: every 20 years, you lose 5 years of your waking time looking at your phone.

This is interesting because I suspect most people use their phone while doing other things. I’m in a meeting commenting on this article with my phone. I’ve got maybe 15min a day of “I’m only paying attention to my phone” but I have 4-5 hours of phone screen time. Maybe I’m unusual though.

I ended up doing this with Screen Time, but not knowing my own passcode. Having a partner or close friend is generally the approach I'd recommend, but you can also do this with iPhone Mirroring — I wrote up a how to guide in https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/setting-an-unknown-screen-t....

> Maybe you’re at a restaurant and they need you to open a website for example. You may end up having to bug some people around you for their phone. It can be annoying but I haven’t found this to be too troublesome.

I have been using a profile-based restricted iPhone setup for about 6 months now, and this has been the biggest holdup for me. I've pretty successfully blocked almost everything distracting, but I'm pretty good at finding ways to bypass my restrictions. e.g., I'll find an alternative Reddit client (like Redlib) to bypass my Reddit blocks.

The obvious solution is to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist, but then you completely lose the ability to scan QR codes in the wild.

I'm thinking of building a browser designed for this purpose. Your browsing can begin at certain pre-defined entrypoints, like a news aggregator or a QR code, but you can't manually enter arbitrary URLs or use search engines.

The built in iPhone time limits work well if you have a partner - simply have them set the password and keep it secret.

You want to spend more time scrolling on twitter?

Fine, muster up the courage to ask your wife for it while she preps school lunches for the kids.

So "dumbphone" now means "runs only a preselected by me set of apps"? I thought it meant "phone with no app functionality whatsoever, only capable of voice, text, and other basic cell network services"?

Could this be used as an alternative to Parental Controls? Appple's implementation of parental controls is so deficient that it gives me PTSD every time I need to configure it.

One thing to keep in mind is that supervising via Apple Configurator (without a hosted MDM server) means you lose Activation Lock protection.

The Apple Configurator seems like a great tool to setup a phone for your children or tech illiterate elderly parents. Many of us would have people in our lives who might actually understand how to use their phone if the only icons on the home screen where messages and phone. I could imagine ChatGPT would be a good option for them to be able to look up information in the real world.

It's ironic what's useful is making the phone effectively into a Palm OS phone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS

Perhaps focussing on productivity and helping users like these devices did/had to instead of being consumption devices is a way to explore?

I did a CRTL+F for "Jamf" in this thread and didn't see it mentioned, but I would say if you're going through the effort of Apple Configurator then it makes sense to go the next mile and get some kind of MDM software that will make future updates and policies easier to apply.

As a bonus, if you're a parent and have kids it'll be very useful for them.

Is there any way to do this with Android? I'd wish to get a modern snappy phone with a great camera but completely locked down.

I'll have to remember this when I next get a new phone so I don't have to wipe my current device.

I have more issues with self control on my computer than on my smartphone. Anyone's got any tips for that one?

If you disable the App Store, as OP claims to, does that also stop installed apps receiving updates?

It's strange to call a device with access to Claude and ChatGPT a "dumbphone"

Is there a way not to loose info on the phone, such as contacts?

one underrated approach more and more people are finding success with: apple watch ultra as a primary device (optionally with a case for a more phone-like factor)

you can do most things an iphone does, but you can't doom scroll. you don't have to eject out of apple ecosystem, you get payments, 2fa, navigation, notifications. your iphone can remain as a backup that's always in sync for when you need it (e.g. traveling)

Or just enable Screen Time and ask another person to set up the pin for you. No need to install any software and play with profiles.

OP is using LastPass still, oof...

I cant believe people have to do this...what a world! nice to have the option I guess!

> getting the right setup takes a few weeks, and you may need to rely on others.

Lol

Not really on the topic of the post, but I love the active reader count on the top.

Not good

Before installing all those apps the author listed, I'd recommend this exercise:

Let the battery die on your phone, and live one week without it. Cold turkey. Tell people in advance if you need to, give them an alternate way to reach you. Replace your phone for that week with a small notebook that fits in your pocket.

During that week, every time you want to do something that requires a smartphone, jot it down in your notebook. Then, fifteen minutes later or so, write down what you did instead.

After a week, you're ready to start using your smartphone again and turn it into a so-called "dumb phone." Read your notebook and think honestly about which things you really needed to do, and which ones weren't such a big deal after all.

This is how I cured my social media addiction.

I turned my iPhone into pure utility device by uninstalling all the entertainment apps. I only allow music and podcasts as those don’t require my active attention.

Then I have an iPad mini at home which has all the entertainment and social media stuff installed. However I don’t have many opportunities to use that device during the day..

After maybe a week of having this arrangement I found myself being less and less interested in grabbing that iPad. It’s been few months now and I only check my socials maybe twice a week.

Also since I deleted Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube and TikTok from my phone the battery life almost doubled. It was eye opening to see how much these apps drain battery even when the device is left untouched.

> Consider email. I still need to have access to email, and I want to have notifications enabled so I don’t miss something truly important. But 90% of the emails I get aren’t important.

I was at a talk at FOSDEM this year and they were talking about how most emails now (over 90%) are transactional in nature and not personal. Things like password resets, offers, 2fa, shipping confirmations.

This was a lightbulb moment for me - for years I'd been trying to fight email by using sieve to filter away the most annoying senders and subjects but they're right - almost all email doesn't deserve your immediate attention.

I switched my method to whitelist. I created a folder called Transactional and everything goes in there. Then I started whitelisting certain email addresses to let them get to my inbox. I have around 20, and for the first time in years I'm at a point where I could have notifications for my inbox. I still don't, but they'd be useful now

I have some issues with this guide. I find it very odd how the very first step of the guide is to “erase all content and settings” but it doesn’t really mention all the caveats around this. There really should be warnings or a separate guide about doing this safely because if some people do that, they could lock themselves out of MFA-protected accounts.

Lastly, about Apple Configurator, it seems like it only works on macOS, so probably this won’t work if you have an iPhone but no macOS device, right?

I took an easier path. I carry two phones - a smartphone and a dumb phone. The smartphone is usually turned off, and is only charged once every 3-4 days. It holds its charge. The dumbphone is actually a second-hand Sony Ericsson Walkman phone which I really love. It has basic web browsing, some very basic utility apps and excellent sound quality, which I care a lot about and bluetooth too. This physical, non-software based friction is what helped me cure my addiction. If someone wants to contact me urgently - they drop a regular SMS or simply just call me. This also helped me separate my personal life and work life really well where clients can reach me on WhatsApp or elsewhere only when I'm on my laptop. Other times, if it's an emergency, they can always just call me.

I don't use Facebook or other social media on my laptop anyway, so it's nice to have when I need to access something (like marketplace). But other than that, the peace of mind is truly worth the hassle of carrying two phones.

I really like this setup. I think it balances friction and usefulness in exactly the way I've been aiming for.

Still, I have a couple questions about it, since I don't own an iPhone but am considering buying one soon.

1. How does this affect backup and restore? Could I still restore from a backup on a new phone, if needed? I've lost my phone while traveling before and buying a replacement was pretty seamless.

2. Is the ability to disable the profile bound to the Mac you use Apple Configurator on? I don't own a Mac, but if I could use a friend's Mac when I need to make changes this could maybe work.

Great writeup, thanks for posting it!

Thanks! Great idea to use configurator. Turning my iPhone into a dumb phone has been one of the best things I ever did. My relationship with my phone was weird (using it for distraction from anxiety, zoning out on it etc) and all this has gotten way better, I’m finding I can focus again. (I’ve set something similar up using an ad blocker app, but it was a bit of a hack.)

I’d highly suggest installing Dumb Phone (dp) from App Store to simplify your home into a monochromatic list, to top off this excellent guide.

I don't understand why people leave email notifications enabled. There is almost no email I get that needs instant action. The one exception is delivery notifications, so I can retrieve the package immediately, and I used a filter to get notifications just for those.

The configurator is interesting and something I haven't heard of before!

It's a double edged sword because the amount of time I spend online (X) has been directly responsible for the most valuable opportunities and generally knowing enough of what's going on to leverage that for big financial and career returns. It was pretty easy to drop all non-X social media though (all meta) and just avoid short term video generally.

I've been tempted to try the lightphone 3 though - theory being if I have a separate hardware device that might be enough to help because I can leave the iPhone at home. In theory the Apple Watch could do this, but in practice it hasn't.

Another thing I think can work is committing to avoid using it for one day a week - you get a lot of the benefits, it's more doable, and the downside is minimized.

The author says screen time limits are too easy to ignore. That is in a sense true. I "solved" that problem though by using a password to unlock the app. I however don't know that password, only my wife does. So whenever i need to use the browser, facebook or something i ask her to unlock it for me, often for like 15 minutes.

I often leave the house without my iPhone. Here is my full stack:

- Ask wife to set up screen time passcode and not tell me

- Block social media and other distracting websites in Screen Time

- Set a 1 minute time limit on distracting apps

- Keep the phone in the garage as much as possible

- Get an Apple Watch cellular so that I can still communicate with people, make payments, get directions etc when I am out and about

Not a perfect dumb phone but this has helped me reduce usage tremendously.

If you're going through the hassle of reseting your iPhone to set with Configurator, you should think about pair locking your phone while you're at it:

https://reincubate.com/support/how-to/pair-lock-supervise-ip...

Just uninstalling the endless scrolling apps (Twitter, Reddit, Instagram etc.) was enough for me.

I've been trying to do this too - paring down distracting apps, leaving only essentials like communication, maps, uber, etc. But my problem is what to do about the browser? I feel it's too essential to the "long tail" of uses (as the author put it), but also among the most distracting apps on my phone.

If anybody has any ideas I'd love to hear them.

Using iOS 26 with the glassy-reflective elements feels like a storm in a teacup with making people even more addicted to their phones the moment they pick them up, observing all the shiny effects with a slight tilt of their wrist.

I wish Apple would open up customization capabilities to properly kick the addictive elements from the phone, like Android with custom launchers...

I've also experimented with Apple Configurator many months ago but unfortunately it's too tedious for most people wanting to enforce a simplified phone, but its beauty is in its level of power of creating a bespoke iPhone experience.

fwiw I'm the maker of the Dumb Phone app (dp) that somebody mentioned below and what's mostly kept my daily average screen time to 1-2 hours is getting rid of the addictive elements from the home screen.

No more color, icons, fancy wallpapers, just a simple single-colored text-based list of my most essential apps that open when tapped. Zero social media.

We live in 2025 and as much as i'd love to experiment with a nerfed feature phone, I personally need a high quality camera each day, maps of course, banking apps, authenticators, etc.

Kicking that dopamine hit has helped me use my phone as a utility again, otherwise I put it away. I have an Apple Watch too with all alerts turned off except for calls, texts - so another reason to keep the phone down.

Since I also run a business I do need to leverage mobile social apps, so these now all live on a "separate" iPhone which stays in a drawer until I need to perform a particular task with it, then it goes back in right away.

Genuinely feels good to have my phones work for me now rather than the other way around, and I see a lot of common sentiment when I speak to people who have also done the same thing to their phones.

Highly recommend cleaning up your Home Screen as a good starting point, and purge your notifications.

edit: I also begrudgingly installed Beeper last week to keep in touch with an important group chat on FB messenger on the main phone, but it's bliss only seeing a list of group messages vs the long list of story buttons along the top in the main app, green and red dots, so i'm not inclined to tap around afterwards.

It is possible to supervise your phone AND keep all your data. I've done it to my phone. https://www.techlockdown.com/guides/restore-full-backup-supe... When you do it, be sure to Disable Stolen Device Protection and "Find my iPhone" on both devices.

This is very cool to see.

I've been playing around with the idea of getting an old iphone just for car play and dumbphone purposes. However, I always discarded the idea due to the lack of control iOS gives you in restricting and customizing certain things. But now, this Apple configurator gives me a bit more motivation to make that jump, even though I probably wont be able to use it for all my specific needs.

I also ended up experimenting for a few months with the Samsung G1650 which runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow. I was able to get apps like Termux and other utilities on it which made my experience what I wanted while also not compromising on having no modern messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. It wasnt a complete dumbphone per se, but it was almost impossible to doomscroll or browse the internet on that phone.

In the end I stopped using my G1650 due to the fact that it was too tedious waiting 5+ minutes for poorly optimized apps like Spotify/Taxi apps to load. Also, the phone became expontentially slower with more storage being used, which is expected since wasnt really made to storage gigs of message and media logs.

>"Dumbphone"

>installs e-reader apps, password apps, ridehailing/rental apps, music apps, gym apps, dev apps, home apps, "Your Internet Provider" apps (?)

???

I get that some of these are essential, but including home automation and gym apps is really pushing the definition of a "dumb phone". It just sounds like the author wants to avoid installing tiktok and games when he's talking about a "dumb phone".

"you can actually disable the App Store! This is a marvelous win."

I thought this one was weird, personally. The App Store is among those I use least on my phone. I only open it when there is a specific new app I want to install (which is rare; I have maybe a dozen apps installed that didn't come with my phone). I easly go months without opening the App Store.

Are there people just browsing the App Store daily?

I've tried so many things like this over the years and considered Configurator, but my only Apple computer at this point is a corporate Mac that blocks USB access to my phone. It's a great idea, and I'm glad to see it documented.

That said, the biggest shift I encountered in my own phone usage was when I got an Aro box [1]. It's expensive (I got one refurbished), but pretty, and functional, and it has made a HUGE difference in my phone habits. I no longer keep my phone in my bedroom and when I catch myself ignoring those around me in favor of my phone, I can hard cut that off by putting it in the box.

I like the idea of simplifying your phone with software tweaks like this, but I have found the physical separation to be the most freeing, and encourage that if you're interested in freeing yourself from the screen.

[1] https://www.goaro.com/for-families

My idea to give my son a dumbed-down phone one day was to only install a terminal on it, and maybe chatgpt. And give him access to a server via tailscale. Then he could do whatever a terminal could do, except without the audiovisual or socialnetworking dopamine fixes. And retain all the basic phone functionality.

Have a s23 ultra, iPhone is for people who just follow others. To be honest, android has better specs anyways. Android team whos with me?

somewhat simpler but paid (but pricey at $10 month) solution i’ll shill for is Opal. only app i’ve used that can actually lock app, set time limits, etc w a pretty great UI and config setup

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1497465230

Here's what worked for me - after trying screen limits, nokia phones

1. Remove all social media apps from iPhone 2. Use Opal in deep focus mode to block apps and websites (I can't exit the deep focus mode - but I allow myself a 2 hour window when deepfocus isn't active) 3. Keep my phone inside my bag - out of sight out of mind 4. Remove "tap to wake up" in settings - you'll have to click the side button to see the screen 5. Deleted slack and email - was hesitant about missing important notifications, but decided to try for a week and realized it made no difference to my work

For those that are looking for something more advanced in the Android space a friend of mine built https://limitphone.com/ to handle something like this. It requires a reset, but comes with a lot more options.

Love this, I created Foqos which is FOSS (free & open source sw). The idea is to use physical switches like QR codes or NFC tags to block apps. Its free to try and just requires an install. Worth checking out if this doesn't work out for you.

I'm on the exact same journey as OP but I think I have a solution that is a little easier to setup.

Simply use Apple's Screen Time but lock all of the Screen Time settings behind a pin. Have a friend or loved one create the pin and keep it secret from you and voila.

With Screen time you can have an "Always Allowed" list and if you use the "Downtime" setting it doesn't actually let you set limits past a one minute exception per app.

You also have to make sure that the downtime setting is 24 hours of downtime.

*Edit: seems like a lot of people are suggesting the same exact thing.

Yeah! Tech Lockdown makes this easy. https://www.techlockdown.com/apple-config-generator

> It’s common to rack up 4 hours or more of screen time a day on your phone. Here’s one way to see the cost of that: every 20 years, you lose 5 years of your waking time looking at your phone.

If you spend 4 hours/24 hours on your phone then every 20X you'll have lost 3.33... X.

I think the author is using year and waking-years but it doesn't parse well for me because you don't get close to 20 waking-years for every 20 years.

The best use I have for dumbphones is install VLC to access the NAS music server or your favorite music stream service (I use radioparadise) and play on the stereo.

Well shoot. I just ordered a Mudita Kompakt (minimalist smartphone) to help tackle my phone addiction. Seeing the Apple Configurator allows me to define what apps can be installed and the ability to remove official apps such as Safari or the App Store, now I'm wondering if I just want to stick to my iPhone and do this or use my Kompakt when it arrives.

I have been doing this exact same thing for about a year, this guy is basically me! I love it so far. One difference with his setup, I also set up my Configurator profile so that I can only navigate to whitelisted websites, and I haven't whitelisted anything. This means I have no browser whatsoever (even the in-app ones, like in Maps or FB Messenger, don't work).

This is what I do as well. I actually see so much interest for this sort of "dumb smartphone" in some demographics that I seriously intend to start a company selling configured iPhones at some point.

Shout out to TechLockdown (not my company) for making this sort of setup much easier to accomplish.

I don't understand the addition, and the gimmicks people come up not to check their phones.

Maybe it is because I was already an adult, when the very first generation of mobile phones became affordable, those that only did calls, SMS wasn't even part of it.

I can easily go out and leave phone at home, or don't feel the urge to check it every 5 minutes.

You could also just ask a spouse or family member to set your screen time pw and disable safari. Install parental controlled browser like Spin Browser. And also disable image loading in the settings of Spin Browser. This was a small but significant factor in screen time. Just the images on websites! No more limbic over stimulation!

For me, I can push through and not install the social media apps. I have noticed I'll start doing some other screen time activity like browsing HN more, or news site. The usefulness is higher but still am unable to trade off total screen time.

afaik installing a configuration profile isn't supported with lockdown mode, so you have to pick one. but neat hack. I've installed hosted-profiles (.mobileconfig) files without factory-reset, curious why didn't you go for that route? Just to make it harder?

I would use mine as a dumb phone but the apps are useful.

I don’t have any social media apps on mine though. That’s what kills you.

I did a “soft dumbphone” too: a Focus that only allows Phone/Texts/Maps/Camera. Screen Time has a passcode my partner keeps, and an automation re-enables the Focus if I toggle it off. Keeps utility, kills the slot-machine pull.

The only problem I see with this is that you can’t update your app if you disable the App Store. My bank updates its app annoyingly often, with no grace period - which is bad when you’re in a store and need to pay for stuff.

I was looking into doing something similar recently. Thanks for the timely post!

Better to have a limited data plan like Roamless(data doesn't expire) and stock up on epubs. Then when your away from wifi all you can do is read books.

Would this be good to multi-profile an iPhone for crossing borders? A "travel across borders" blueprint, and a "through the border" blueprint?

Seems like way more work than learning to be disciplined.

> I can only access the apps and websites I want to use

not really a dumb phone is it?

I love how we spend hundreds on a computer in our pocket and then spend a large amount of time trying to reduce the amount of value we get out of it.

One of my daughters has dumbed down her phone. I was hoping it was a generational thing — the twenty-somethings are saying fuck off to phones.

Me, I barely use my phone. But then I'm stuck a laptop guy/generation.

I just block what I don't want with screen time. My wife sets and knows the passcode. I don't. So I can't override.

There’s another solution, much faster, it’s to use Screen Time and have your partner own the passcode. I hold my partner’s phone passcode and it’s fantastic to control when he’s allowed to doom scroll

I wonder what the author is doing with those 2 extra hours of time he's not using his phone.

I use my phone a lot, but I never feel like it's taking away from me doing anything else.

I call it Phonevorce and I've done pretty well by

- Using AdGuard's pattern matching to block URLs I found distracting (news sites, youtuble)

- Deleted all apps I spend too much time on (basically down to Discord where I have two or three communities I check in on)

- Leaving my phones in the other room all day

- Turning all notifications off except for a very small select few whose (calls only) go through

- Deleting all social media (still have HackerNews (computer only), Discord)

It's great! Love it. Fuck your phone. I use mine to check bank accounts, do Spanish flash cards, and occasionally to look at housing and life is calmer and nicer and I get more done.

> blocks social media because too addictive

> allows llms

If smartphones were real computers, instead of expensive little closed portable TV's with cameras, we could run multiple VM's, each with their own network ID's, accounts, apps, etc.

Maybe these sexy AI LLM's can help us root all these closed devices and OS's, instead of being used to write yet another stupid web app faster?

I found screentime does work - I activated it for my spouse and only I know the PIN. It limits her social media and YT time to 45m/day.

> I tried Screen Time but it was too easy to ignore.

My spouse and I set passcodes on each other's Screen Time. Make sure you also check the option to block at end. Problem solved.

I would love to be able to turn off Instagram Reels on iOS like is apparently possible on Android.

I can't believe how much stuff he configured on a "dumbphone"

why not:

- phone app

- messages

- calendar

- clock

- notes

- reminders

Too bad iPhone is a dumbphone fromt the get go :D