I disabled Safari (via parental settings), use an email account that auto-forwards everything to my main email, thus I can only send email from my phone, but not receive any (the inbox is always empty and I don't check my main email on it).
I only have apps that I use to input things into the phone (writing, taking photos) and I eliminiated everything that isn't designed to end at some point.
No Instagram or any of the likes, only WhatsApp, but muted so I have to proactively check it. I do use a news reader, which is subscribed to the RSS feeds of the sites I want to follow. No algorithmic curation of that content, and no ads (unless I open the sites that the RSS items link to).
Keeping one's sanity away from the side effects of tech these days is quite a technical job, somehow ;)
The free Merlin bird app will listen for birds around you and tell you what they all are, and help you identify them by sight.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/
Every day a diary entry from the 17th century. Today he went to see Hamlet at the theatre. Seems like an equivalent to watching TV for him, and went to have his portrait painted, no cameras then.
I enjoyed reading Pepys diary. Seems like almost every day he meets up with his pals, gets totally wasted, eats fine food and generally just lives his best life. It's kind of how I remember things before I had kids...
Search for good games in the vast pile trash mobile games: Gorogoa comes to mind
Start developping apps for your phone
Start modding the hardware of your phone (e.g. build a custom case)
Read books (modern phones with bigger screens are surprisingly comfortable for reading)
Research all the birthdays of your friends and safe them in the contact information. Your phone will remind you to send them a message on their birthday;)
I highly recommend "Backgammon NJ for Android" by Jimmy Hu - well worth the price. It has the best computer opponent I've seen (one that can usually beat me on the hardest setting, all of the computer opponents on the free backgammon games I tried years ago were a joke).
IMO this is a sign that you don’t need to use your phone as much.
EDIT: My response to your question was really flippant. Sorry. I hate how phones have become consumption powerhouses that eat into peoples’ lives instead of the ultra-powerful tools that supplement them, and your question triggered that nerve (though you didn’t mean to!).
There are lots of useful things you can do with your phone that don’t encourage consumption above all else.
One of those things is learning a new language.
I’ve been using Babbel and Duolingo to learn French. While they don’t replace language classes (though Babbel Live looks really compelling), they are excellent supplements and practice tools.
I recommend Duolingo with a huge caveat: the app is extremely gamified, complete with micro transactions (gems to protect strike freezes, extra hearts since you only get five and every mistake you make costs one), side quests and boosts (you’ll see ads to upgrade to Super Duolingo after every “lesson” and occasional ads for Duolingo Max, the AI-assistance tier). The website version has none of those. I only use the website version.
Heavens Above app is pretty awesome. I use it a lot when I'm outside walking my dogs at night time. It also makes locating comets (past tense now, I know...) easier, along with stars and satellites, etc. from your vantage point.
Shazam app for when you're out in the wild, and hear a song you would like to hear again later.
AIY Projects app if you want to play around with Google's AI and robotics hardware at home.
Robot36 app if you want to decode picture images sent over shortwave radio.
Bike Share app if you're in a city where you can rent their bikes. Otherwise, whatever the local one would be.
Google Lens app, for those times you're looking at something and want to know wtf it is, or how much it normally costs. I use it a lot just about everywhere. I know an awful lot about the plant life in my neighbourhood as a result. A lot of it is edible, and some of those actually taste good.
Oticon app if you have hearing aids and like to fiddle around with the settings in a way that you can't with the hardware controls.
FlightRadar24.com website for determining what that plane is that just about to fly over.
These are just a handful of what I use my phone for. I like to make sure when my phone dies, I feel like I got value out of it!
I'm trying to cut down on my phone (Android) usage, and so far I've found these steps to be really helpful
- A minimal launcher like OLauncher
- Obsidian for note taking.
- Syncthing-Fork to sync my notes and phone gallery with my computer.
- Local Send for file transfer between any device and OS.
- Readera for reading ebooks.
- Rethink DNS to firewall and selectively block internet for applications or domains.
- This helps a lot, e.g. cutting off Telegram and WhatsApp's internet when I've gone for a walk and just want to listen to music, but don't want to be bombarded by texts or calls. People say you can mute or turn off notifications, but I still subconsciously open these apps and get distracted.
- Grayscale or reading mode to make the screen black and white. Makes the phone more conducive to reading.
- Newpipe for the occasional one-off YouTube video.
- Harmonic for hacker news. I've found many interesting articles and stories here.
If you want something a bit more out of the box than simply playing a game, give animating a spin! Just a simple flipbook-style animation app, there should be plenty out there. No need for pose-to-pose or anything at first, just try abstract, straight-ahead animation. If you find yourself gaining an interest, it's easy enough to pick up knowledge as you need it (if you do want a jumping-off point, I'd recommend Alan Becker's series[1] on the 12 principles of animation).
It's incredibly fun bringing even the simplest of things to life, and really rewarding getting to look back and see how your understanding of motion and weight grow over time.
My dad has an app that can identify tree species from a photo of the leaf. I can't remember what it was called but it was definitely better than any social media haha.
Same for birds! I love the Merlin app. I even have a shortcut that works with the action button where I can quick-launch Merlin whenever I hear an interesting birdsong.
I've uninstalled all of the Social Media feeds from my phone. Whenever i get the itch to scroll through something, i've set up a RSS reader app with a bunch of blogs that i follow instead.
It provides relief for the before mentioned itch and i end up engaging with longer form content and often learning something, instead of brain rot.
ah!, amazing things,your mind,viewing and doing
and a phone
well for me,its making money with it and finding sex from it
depending on your interests and needs, the two could be combined
I highly recommend "Backgammon NJ for Android" by Jimmy Hu - well worth the price. It has the best computer opponent I've seen (one that can usually beat me on the hardest setting, all of the computer opponents on the free backgammon games I tried years ago were a joke).
IMO despite its cultural mystique, playing chess on one’s phone is no more or less amazing or a waste of time as playing candy crush on one’s phone or scrolling Instagram.
I'm unsure what to answer because I'm don't understand the motivation for the question. Do you have a goal in life to use your phone more? Or do you have something going on that forces you to kill time on your phone and are trying to make it be more productive?
Use it for doing things that will benefit you in the long run:
1. Networking with the experts of your field through right platforms.
2. Gain credibility by showcasing your achievements and progress.
3. Build your own distribution.
For me its about things to not do on my phone.
I disabled Safari (via parental settings), use an email account that auto-forwards everything to my main email, thus I can only send email from my phone, but not receive any (the inbox is always empty and I don't check my main email on it).
I only have apps that I use to input things into the phone (writing, taking photos) and I eliminiated everything that isn't designed to end at some point.
No Instagram or any of the likes, only WhatsApp, but muted so I have to proactively check it. I do use a news reader, which is subscribed to the RSS feeds of the sites I want to follow. No algorithmic curation of that content, and no ads (unless I open the sites that the RSS items link to).
Keeping one's sanity away from the side effects of tech these days is quite a technical job, somehow ;)
The free Merlin bird app will listen for birds around you and tell you what they all are, and help you identify them by sight.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/ Every day a diary entry from the 17th century. Today he went to see Hamlet at the theatre. Seems like an equivalent to watching TV for him, and went to have his portrait painted, no cameras then.
I enjoyed reading Pepys diary. Seems like almost every day he meets up with his pals, gets totally wasted, eats fine food and generally just lives his best life. It's kind of how I remember things before I had kids...
Search for good games in the vast pile trash mobile games: Gorogoa comes to mind
Start developping apps for your phone
Start modding the hardware of your phone (e.g. build a custom case)
Read books (modern phones with bigger screens are surprisingly comfortable for reading)
Research all the birthdays of your friends and safe them in the contact information. Your phone will remind you to send them a message on their birthday;)
Hoplite is the best damn mobile game ever.
> good games
I highly recommend "Backgammon NJ for Android" by Jimmy Hu - well worth the price. It has the best computer opponent I've seen (one that can usually beat me on the hardest setting, all of the computer opponents on the free backgammon games I tried years ago were a joke).
> good games
Coffee Golf is a great time waster
IMO this is a sign that you don’t need to use your phone as much.
EDIT: My response to your question was really flippant. Sorry. I hate how phones have become consumption powerhouses that eat into peoples’ lives instead of the ultra-powerful tools that supplement them, and your question triggered that nerve (though you didn’t mean to!).
There are lots of useful things you can do with your phone that don’t encourage consumption above all else.
One of those things is learning a new language.
I’ve been using Babbel and Duolingo to learn French. While they don’t replace language classes (though Babbel Live looks really compelling), they are excellent supplements and practice tools.
I recommend Duolingo with a huge caveat: the app is extremely gamified, complete with micro transactions (gems to protect strike freezes, extra hearts since you only get five and every mistake you make costs one), side quests and boosts (you’ll see ads to upgrade to Super Duolingo after every “lesson” and occasional ads for Duolingo Max, the AI-assistance tier). The website version has none of those. I only use the website version.
Heavens Above app is pretty awesome. I use it a lot when I'm outside walking my dogs at night time. It also makes locating comets (past tense now, I know...) easier, along with stars and satellites, etc. from your vantage point.
Shazam app for when you're out in the wild, and hear a song you would like to hear again later.
AIY Projects app if you want to play around with Google's AI and robotics hardware at home.
Robot36 app if you want to decode picture images sent over shortwave radio.
Bike Share app if you're in a city where you can rent their bikes. Otherwise, whatever the local one would be.
Google Lens app, for those times you're looking at something and want to know wtf it is, or how much it normally costs. I use it a lot just about everywhere. I know an awful lot about the plant life in my neighbourhood as a result. A lot of it is edible, and some of those actually taste good.
Oticon app if you have hearing aids and like to fiddle around with the settings in a way that you can't with the hardware controls.
FlightRadar24.com website for determining what that plane is that just about to fly over.
These are just a handful of what I use my phone for. I like to make sure when my phone dies, I feel like I got value out of it!
I just found out RetroArch is available for iOS and has all the emulators I could want built in.
I'm trying to cut down on my phone (Android) usage, and so far I've found these steps to be really helpful
- A minimal launcher like OLauncher
- Obsidian for note taking.
- Syncthing-Fork to sync my notes and phone gallery with my computer.
- Local Send for file transfer between any device and OS.
- Readera for reading ebooks.
- Rethink DNS to firewall and selectively block internet for applications or domains.
- Grayscale or reading mode to make the screen black and white. Makes the phone more conducive to reading.- Newpipe for the occasional one-off YouTube video.
- Harmonic for hacker news. I've found many interesting articles and stories here.
Anki is a fairly expensive app, but it’s absolutely worth the $25. I’ve personally been trying to make my phone into an Anki-only device.
- Read books.
- Read articles saved to a "read it later" service, like Instapaper or Readwise.
- Write thoughts and other stuff down.
- Play chess or other mindful games.
- If you have an iPhone, download the free GarageBand and mess around with making music.
- Don't use your phone.
If you want something a bit more out of the box than simply playing a game, give animating a spin! Just a simple flipbook-style animation app, there should be plenty out there. No need for pose-to-pose or anything at first, just try abstract, straight-ahead animation. If you find yourself gaining an interest, it's easy enough to pick up knowledge as you need it (if you do want a jumping-off point, I'd recommend Alan Becker's series[1] on the 12 principles of animation).
It's incredibly fun bringing even the simplest of things to life, and really rewarding getting to look back and see how your understanding of motion and weight grow over time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4
My dad has an app that can identify tree species from a photo of the leaf. I can't remember what it was called but it was definitely better than any social media haha.
Same for birds! I love the Merlin app. I even have a shortcut that works with the action button where I can quick-launch Merlin whenever I hear an interesting birdsong.
How about not using it and being bored - https://youtu.be/LKPwKFigF8U
Language exchange apps like Speaky, Tandem or HelloTalk - connect with people learning your language
Maybe read ebooks (epub) with KoReader. Recently I found out that I can build up knowledge instead of wasting my time...
iNaturalist allows you to determine plants and wildlife, all the while contributing to science !
I've uninstalled all of the Social Media feeds from my phone. Whenever i get the itch to scroll through something, i've set up a RSS reader app with a bunch of blogs that i follow instead.
It provides relief for the before mentioned itch and i end up engaging with longer form content and often learning something, instead of brain rot.
ah!, amazing things,your mind,viewing and doing and a phone well for me,its making money with it and finding sex from it depending on your interests and needs, the two could be combined
Turning it off regularly and taking in the world around you in more depth.
Stellarium especially the premium version is a one time payment only is absolutely worth it for dense astronomical sighting.
Play chessk, read books, find a game (I don't game so for me its very refreshing... different than opening X/HN/etc)
> find a game
I highly recommend "Backgammon NJ for Android" by Jimmy Hu - well worth the price. It has the best computer opponent I've seen (one that can usually beat me on the hardest setting, all of the computer opponents on the free backgammon games I tried years ago were a joke).
chess.com - learn to play chess. Play against the computer choosing the ability of your opponent, includes not at all good!
IMO despite its cultural mystique, playing chess on one’s phone is no more or less amazing or a waste of time as playing candy crush on one’s phone or scrolling Instagram.
Yes, but I feel having a moderate understanding opens up face to face chess. Getting going is tricky otherwise.
I'm unsure what to answer because I'm don't understand the motivation for the question. Do you have a goal in life to use your phone more? Or do you have something going on that forces you to kill time on your phone and are trying to make it be more productive?
You can do animal and plant recognition with it, I suppose.
Use it for doing things that will benefit you in the long run:
1. Networking with the experts of your field through right platforms. 2. Gain credibility by showcasing your achievements and progress. 3. Build your own distribution.
Turning it off and talking to a stranger.
Put it the fuck down
Why don't you ask Siri?
Watch a TED talk
Maybe some of the older ones. The problem with TED, is that is mostly the 'E' these days - 'Entertainment'. It has developed into a meme...
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.