How to dumb down your iPhone

A list of what I did to my iPhone to make it far less appealing and distracting.

My greatest distraction from writing is my phone. I’ll tell myself that I earned some scroll time, but then an hour later, I am still scrolling and wondering what happened to my motivation to do any meaningful work.

The solution, according to some, is to buy a dumb phone—something with no screen or shiny apps to keep me busy. But unfortunately, my phone is not just a plastic housing for TikTok and Threads; it is also a tool that I need for my day job. I have to rely on security features to sign in to my job. When I travel from Maine to DC for work, I rely on my phone for my airline, hotel, and Uber apps. I also have the directional sense of a dust mote, so I rely on maps when I leave my house.

So, instead of swapping phones and living to regret it when I slam into a roadblock that requires me to use one of several apps, I decided to try something a little unorthodox instead.

I dumbed down my iPhone. Here is what I did:

Location & Privacy

I opened Settings > Privacy & Security and worked through these three items:

Turn off ad tracking

Tap Tracking and make sure Allow Apps to Request to Track is off. This stops apps from following my behavior across other apps and websites.

Audit Location Services

Tap Location Services and go through every app on the list. I set anything I don’t actively need to Never. Anything that does need my location, e.g., maps, weather, is set to While Using, which means it can only access my location when I am actively using the app, but no longer running in the background.

Turn off personalized ads

Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising > turn off Personalized Ads. This one is just so Big Brother to me. Hard pass. No thanks.

Delete Social Media

I deleted all of it. If I really want to check Threads, I’ll do it on my computer intentionally, not reflexively every moment I am bored. Any app that is designed to grab and hold my attention has no business being on a device I carry everywhere.

To be fair, avoiding Threads while I am working on my computer is a separate problem.

Time Limits & the Downtime Option

Under Settings > Screen Time, there is the App Limits setting, which is super great for getting strict about how often I let this device occupy my attention. Since I already deleted social media (my biggest time suck), setting time limits isn’t really effective.

Instead, I set up Downtime, which allows me to set specific hours when my phone doesn’t show me any notifications. Hearing that annoying ding everytime I get an email or text is enough to drive me batty, this feature pauses all of those notifications during my pre-set times. It also dims my screen as a gentle nudge that I should be off the phone, anyway.

Grayscale

I went to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters and I set my phone to grayscale. All of my photos are still in color, but the apps that still exist on my phone are not colorful. Personally, that makes the experience far less appealing.

No setting on my phone can ensure that I sit down and write, obviously. But there is something reassuring and calming about removing as many of the nonstop distractions as possible. It makes screen time—including writing—less anxious and more productive.