Another iPhone post
Yesterday I stumbled upon this post by Jason Stirman in which he talks about his iPhone setup. I don’t have anything against the post itself and his setup is pretty similar to mine. I do have a bit of an issue with this idea of balancing “beauty” because, well because it’s a damn phone. Stop looking for beauty in your phone and look around. But anyway, that’s not a major issue. The major issue is this: how many apps do you have on your phone Jason?!
Missing the point
I think many people are missing the point when it comes to simplifying things whether it’s in the digital world or in the physical one. The goal is not to organize and move stuff in order not to see them anymore. The goal is to get rid of them altogether. Having said that, here’s my 3 steps guide to improve your iPhone.
Step 1: Delete everything you don’t use
Pretty straightforward. Delete everything. I don’t believe you if you tell me you need all those 130 apps. You don’t. Unless you’re a crazy person you don’t need 130 apps. Ever. I have 25 apps currently installed and that includes 15 system apps. I don’t think everyone should be this extreme but you can probably live just fine with less than 50 apps. You want to know what apps I have installed? There you go:
And this is what I have inside the only folder. As you can see, most of the stuff in there is either utility apps (home banking, 1Password, Dropbox, etc) or iOS apps.
And yes, I have no email, no social media and no games. Because I use a computer to work and if I’m not at my computer it means I’m not working and I don’t need to waste time on any of that stuff.
Step 2: Turn off notifications, put the phone in do not disturb and leave it in the other room.
Because unless you’re in the 0.00001% of the population who need the phone to do his or her job then you can simply forget about it. And if you’re out with friends you don’t need to check your phone anyway. So turn off everything.
Step 3: Only enable Search to find apps and nothing else
Once you got rid of everything you can go a step further and use the search function to navigate around your phone. This way you don’t even need to open folders and swipe through pages. To do that, go under Setting → Siri & Search, turn off the first 4 options unless you like to talk to Siri, and then, for each app, turn off the Search & Siri Suggestions. Once you turn that off a new option will appear below that will simply show the app inside the search results. This way you’ll be able to simply search through the apps and you won’t get distracted by anything else inside the search results.
Almost forgot, forget about widgets. You don’t need them. So there, that’s my take on how to improve your iPhone experience.