How to get your time and attention back by turning your iPhone into a “lite” phone
What it Took to Get Here
I’ve been embarrassingly addicted to my phone. And I know I’m not alone in that. I cannot bear to share my screentime stats publicly but I will say that doing all the things I am suggesting in this article immediately cut my screen time by more than half. I am sleeping better, experiencing less stress and anxiety, my focus and executive function have improved, and spending more time doing things that are net positive for me, my loved ones, and my community.
Between the pandemic, living alone, and working remotely, my social needs have been less passively met by coworkers and housemates and slowly being replaced by more time alone and online. But it didn’t start in the past few years. This has been an accumulating slow drip addiction pretty much my entire adult life. The last 10+ years I’ve spent as a product designer and user researcher and I can attest that our tools, methods, and access to data has made us scary good at capturing people’s attention and it’s literally changing our brains.
I have known for a long time that addiction to my phone and it’s effects were getting worse and likely affecting my sleep, focus, and anxiety levels but in spring 2024, I suffered an enormous personal loss which dialed everything up to 11. The insomnia and middle of the night anxiety brain I was already struggling with now felt predictable and unavoidable. The lack of sleep deepened the executive disfunction I was experiencing from grieving. Staring mindlessly at my phone felt simultaneously like a reprieve from my own thoughts and like I was “doing something” - taking in the news, checking in on friends, learning an interesting fact. The end of the day came with guilt and stress that I could not focus enough to get many tasks accomplished which added to the inability to sleep. The perfect positive feedback loop of misery. I came to the conclusion that during good smooth-sailing life times, my phone was making everything a little worse but during difficult life times, things became quickly intolerable. This reached a critical mass for me personally on November 5th as the news of the election broke and I felt extremely clear that I could not have the same relationship with news and other media as I did the past 8 years. I don’t have a perfect solution yet with how to stay connected to people, local events, and important news but step one for me was making my phone A LOT less addictive.
I looked into getting trading in my smart phone altogether and getting a “lite” or minimal phone and this might work great for some of you! It felt like a huge leap considering they are kinda pricey and there are certain phone capabilities I don’t want to get rid of or cannot find a replacement option. Thankfully Apple has finally given users a lot of control than you may realize over the design and function of your phone. Read on for my guide on turning a iPhone into a simplified, useful tool.
Disable Safari
Go to Settings and Screen Time. Turn on Screen Time (if not already activated) by clicking App and & Website Activity and clicking Turn On App and Website Activity.
If Screen Time is already enabled, select Content and Privacy Restrictions and toggle the restrictions on. Go to Allowed Apps and Features and toggle Safari off.
If you use another browser as well, simply delete it.
Delete apps
Do it. You’re so brave. Be bold! You can always redownload something if your life is truly worse without it.
I deleted all social media, news apps, shopping apps. Up to you if you want to keep things like banking apps, dating apps, fitness apps, photography apps, etc. If you find yourself relying on those less addictive apps more when the really distracting ones are gone but you do want to keep them on your phone, you can set up Screen Time limits for them.
Screen Time Limits for Medium Addictive Apps + Other Things
1. Restrict Apps
Restrict usage of any apps you want to keep that you might find yourself spending more time on now that the really addictive ones are gone. While I think it’s great that I can now easily get a good streak going on Duolingo, maybe I don’t need to spend more than a half hour on there. If I am that excited to practice Spanish, maybe I should get a tutor or read a book in Spanish, etc - not play a game. Same goes for dating apps. Responding to a message with a real human is good for me. Using it as a human slot machine, not so much.
Go to Settings > Screen Time > App Limits > Add Limit.
2. While you’re here, turn off Siri.
Go to Screen Time > Content and Privacy Restrictions > Intelligence & Siri > Toggle Siri & Dictation Off.
3. If you need some extra support, you can:
Don’t allow downloading apps (but maybe do this last because I’m going to suggest you download an app at the end!)
Go to Screen Time > Content and Privacy Restrictions > iTunes and App Store Purchases > Installing Apps
Don’t allow installing apps (removes App Store)
Allow deleting apps
Don’t allow in-app purchases
Have a friend or partner set the Screen Time passcode to keep you from changing things here without some accountability. Screen Time > Lock Screen Time Settings
Turn off notifications
Settings > Notifications — you can customize your notification preferences per-app. Hopefully you’ve deleted enough apps now that this isn’t overwhelming. If it is, maybe go back and delete more.
I keep messages, phone, Signal, Libby (so I know when my library books are available).
Low power mode
Default Low Power Mode. I make the following Settings adjustments so that my phone is basically always in Low Power Mode without having to toggle it on after it's been charged past 80%.
Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock set to 30 seconds.
Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri should be off.
Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness. I have mixed feelings on the usefulness of this one but you can toggle it off and then keep the display low and turn up manually if necessary.
In Accessibility > Motion > toggle Reduce Motion on. This also makes your phone a little less addictive by not catching your eye quite as much.
Turn Raise and Tap to Wake Off
Settings > Display & Brightness > Raise to Wake > Toggle Off
Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Tap or Swipe to Wake > Toggle Off
Turn Off Face ID
Settings > Face ID and Passcode > iPhone Unlock
Unlocking your phone with your passcode is way more annoying and less passive. Good! I leave Face ID on for App Store, Payments, and Passwords.
Turn on Greayscale + Triple Click
Under Settings > Accessibility > Accessability Shortcut, you can enable the Color Filters option. By default, this will let you enable grayscale mode by triple-clicking your iPhone’s power button. It also has the handy benefit of letting you switch back to color mode with another triple-click.
I prefer my grayscale setting to be extremely low color instead of full on grayscale so you can do this by going to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters > Toggle On > Select Grayscale. Turn down the intensity slightly.
Dumb Phone App
I use the Dumb Phone app. It’s simple and the instructions are clear. I did come across one issue where it stopped launching my apps and I solved it by making my ios was up to date, redownloading the app, and the Dumb Phone app Settings > App Behavior > change Launching Apps to “Always Through Dumb Phone”.
My home screen now looks like the photo on the left and then I can swipe to the second screen of widgets for other handy apps I like to easily access. In my case I have a weather app, Spotify, and a calendar app. This does in fact look gray on my phone but screenshots are still in color
A Note On Social Media, the News, and Supporting Creators You Actually Care About
Not everything on social media is trash. It’s just not a good format for a lot of people anymore. The favorite maker to infuriating political thing to unfolding climate disaster to your friend’s new puppy is an anxiety-inducing whiplash. With Tiktok maybe/likely/whatever going away and Meta turning scarier than ever, it might be time to consider leaving these platforms entirely BUT consider if you want to keep engaging with some of the creators you follow - they probably also have newsletters, patreons, etc and they are also getting savvy on not relying solely on social media as a business model.
For me, it is time to become way more deliberate with when and how I engage with different kinds of media. Signal threads with my closest friends, reading the news when I’m ready (some people are suggesting buying paper newspapers again), and reading email newsletters that I actually want to engage with is working better for me right now. Fwiw I have not deleted my social media accounts and occasionally check them on my laptop browser. For whatever reason it’s way less interesting/addicting on there and also has limited features.
Congrats!
I hope these changes serve you well. I’ve heard a lot of advice suggesting getting a watch which I haven’t done yet but makes sense. Also an alarm clock if you need one and not keeping your phone in your bed. And a calendar on the wall. Being able to tell the day and/or time without looking at your phone is great.
You are bound to experience some difficulties while adapting to new behaviors and I encourage approaching these with curiosity instead of frustration. When you’re out and about, embrace not being able to look something up and question the necessity. Is it actually necessary right now or is it a compulsion out of convenience? Can you figure it out another way? Either with your own brain or asking another human? For me this has been more amusing than truly challenging.
So the last question is, OMG WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO READ NEXT NOW THAT YOU HAVE TIME AND NOT LOOKING AT YOUR PHONE IN BED?!