Keep the phone, lose the pull
Most people don't need a dumbphone. If the scrolling has gotten to be too much, start here.
The pull comes from a handful of settings and apps, and every one of them can be changed. If checking has become a reflex, or social media is taking more of the evening than you'd like, there is a lot to try before you switch phones. Most of it costs nothing. The rest starts at about $10.
Small steps. Pick one and live with it for two weeks before you add another. Combine the ones that fit the way you live and skip the ones that don't. Plenty of people stop partway down this page and never buy a dumbphone.
- 01 Free
Turn off almost every notification
Turn everything off, then turn back on only what a person would tap you on the shoulder for: calls, texts from humans, maybe the calendar. Add a Focus or Do Not Disturb schedule for evenings and work hours, favorites allowed through.
Fixes Being interrupted by things that could have waited.
- 02 Free to about $60
Give it a place to live
A bowl by the door where the phone goes when you walk in, like keys. A faraday bag if you want it properly unreachable: Mission Darkness makes one for about $23 that blocks everything. For the stubborn, a kSafe is a clear box with a timer lock and no override, about $59.
Fixes Dinner. The first hour home. The phone as a fidget.
- 03 Free
Empty the home screen and go gray
One home screen, nothing on it but Phone and Messages. Everything else lives in search. Then turn on the grayscale filter in accessibility settings; on an iPhone, tie it to a triple-click of the side button. It's remarkable how much of the pull was color.
Fixes Grazing. Opening things because they were there.
- 04 Free
Delete the apps
Not moved to a folder. Deleted. If you still need an account, use it in the browser, where it's slower and logs you out. A service you "can't leave" usually becomes one you check twice a week once it takes eight taps to reach.
Fixes The reflex open, and the feed that lived in your pocket.
- 05 About $10 for an alarm clock
Sleep without it
The phone charges outside the bedroom. A ten-dollar clock replaces the alarm. This is the change with the most consistent evidence behind it, and the one people resist most. Give it two weeks.
Fixes Bedtime scrolling, morning scrolling, and sleep itself according to most of the studies.
- 06 Free to about $25
Swap the launcher
A minimalist launcher replaces the icon grid with a short text list of the apps you chose. Olauncher (free, open source) or Niagara on Android. On iPhone, which can't swap launchers, Blank Spaces or Dumbify fake it with a widget.
Fixes The icon grid and its little red badges.
- 07 Free to about $100 a year
Add friction, or a wall
Two flavors. The friction kind makes you pause or breathe before an app opens: one sec, Clearspace. A ten-second pause changes your mind more often than you'd think. The wall kind blocks on a schedule or a budget: ScreenZen (free), Freedom (every device), Opal and Jomo (strict modes you can't talk yourself out of).
Fixes The evening scroll, and the "just checking" that becomes forty minutes.
- 08 $59 once, or about $30 a quarter
Make the off switch physical
Brick is a magnetic square you tap your phone against to block the apps you chose, and tap again to unblock. Leave it on the kitchen shelf and the block holds on the train and in bed. $59, no subscription, one works for the household. Unpluq is the same idea as a keychain tag, with a subscription from about $30 a quarter.
Fixes The rules you keep breaking. Willpower, mostly.
- 09 $20 and up
Try a halfway phone
A second, dumber phone with its own number for weekends or workdays. The dumb.co Dumbphone 2 is $20 plus a plan and forwards your calls, the cheapest possible experiment. A cellular Apple Watch can be the whole phone for a day out. Some people stop here, and that's most of the benefit.
Fixes Weekends and vacations, and the question of whether you could do it at all.
and if you've done all of that
Still want out?
The database has everything from a $20 flip to a $700 minimalist flagship, trade-offs written down.