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iPhone dumbphone

stopa.io

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Re: iPhone dumbphone

#241

Post by yosito »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #130

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 you…

That would be a great idea if I were on vacation in a cabin in the woods. But realistically, I need my phone for just about everything I do on a daily basis, from payments, to navigation, to communicating with friends and family, and logging into accounts for work.

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#242

Post by teeeeeegz »

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.

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#243

Post by teeeeeegz »

stopachka wrote: post #164
devonsolomon wrote: post #96

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)…

> Dumb Phone (dp) from App Store to simplify your home into a monochromatic list I had no idea this was even possible to customize! Thank you.

thanks heaps! more info here: https://dumbphone.so/

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#244

Post by ycombinete »

teeeeeegz wrote: post #242

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 Configu…

One way to achieve this is to set the interface to monochrome.

Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Color Filters -> Monochrome

It becomes instantly less appealing.

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#245

Post by teeeeeegz »

nominalprose wrote: post #5

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).

I've spoken to quite a few people that do this which was very interesting, especially how a hard lock has helped them hard reset and start building healthier phone habits

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#248

Post by dangus »

gxs wrote: post #228
dangus wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have every gmail email I have ever gotten plus attachments downloaded to my Thunderbird client, it is incorrect to say that Google does not let you access that data. They let you do a full sync and use whatever client you want.

I never said they don’t allow it, they even have something called google takeout actually that makes it a bit easier Yes, one way of doing this is to turn on an email client and let it run on your computer for hours and hours to download everything The problem is that unless you’ve done that incrementally since the beginning, going back and doing it now is unreliable. The take process above is your best bet and proba…

I set up new computers somewhat frequently and have never had any issues downloading the entire 20 year old email-never-deleted mailbox from the server, including attachments.

I will also point out that free email is not something that should be expected to be a scalable storage service.

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#249

Post by teeeeeegz »

zeckalpha wrote: post #186
bornfreddy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Not an iPhone, but my solution to this is LineageOS + microG, where I just disable push notifications when I'm not working, or enable them for just the few select apps if I am expecting some messages there. The price for this is that I don't always receive the social app message w…

I use an old iPhone for work stuff.

Using a spare phone is super underrated, I keep mine in the drawer when I need it, and it goes back in there right after when i'm done.

Re: iPhone dumbphone

#250

Post by whoamii »

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.
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