Let’s face it—we spend too much time on our phones. You pick up your phone to check a message, and before you know it, two hours have vanished in a blur of social media reels. Not too long ago, phones were primarily tools for connecting with friends and loved ones. Yes, our cellphones had browsers, email, cameras, and games, but these features felt like added perks. Then came smartphones, bringing a multitude of apps, and suddenly, our devices could do everything.
With my smartphone, I can check my credit card balance, buy a trendy sweater, and play Candy Crush on the way home in an Uber. At home, I might take a filtered selfie, create an Instagram story, and FaceTime my grandma while waiting for a food delivery. Before bed, I’ll scroll through work emails, check my calendar, and set an alarm while listening to a podcast.
Sure, some of these features are genuinely useful, but it’s increasingly difficult to separate the essential from the noise. Technology should enrich our lives, yet we’ve become screen slaves. We don’t need to document every moment or stay constantly informed. The excessive connectivity and dependence on our smartphones are neither healthy nor productive. There’s more to life than our screens.
I’ve been where you are—obsessed with my phone, compulsively checking Reddit, binge-watching YouTube past midnight. Despite being disciplined in other areas of my life, I couldn’t break this habit. In desperation, I experimented with different apps and phone settings, gradually creating a system that worked for me. In this guide, I’ll share the free apps, settings, and configurations I use to drastically reduce my screen time and improve my overall digital wellbeing.
Overview
- Organize Your Messaging Networks with Beeper
- Block Distracting Apps and Set Time Limits with StayFree
- Decide Which Apps to Uninstall Using Our Checklist
- Simplify Your Phone Experience with OLauncher (Android Only)
- Change Your Phone to Black & White for a Minimalist Effect
Simplifying Communications with Beeper
We stay in touch with friends and family across various social media platforms. While these apps are useful for messaging, they also have algorithm-driven feeds that suck us in. Have you ever opened Instagram to message someone, only to find yourself scrolling mindlessly two hours later? The fact that many of us share this experience tells us something is wrong.
Beeper consolidates all your social media chats into a single app, allowing you to send and receive messages across networks like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more—all in one place. Beeper currently supports 14 different chat platforms, and the app is free and ad-free, with an optional subscription for extra features. The company behind it, Automattic (known for WordPress), has a strong commitment to open-source principles.
Beeper allows me to message friends on Instagram without even having the Instagram app on my phone, meaning I’m not distracted by its addictive feed. I currently use Beeper for WhatsApp, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram. However, I do keep use the native WhatsApp application to make calls. A side benefit is fewer apps cluttering my phone, making my digital space feel more streamlined.
After setting up Beeper, resist uninstalling your social media apps right away. We’ll tackle that later.
Block Distracting Apps with StayFree
When people recognize their phone addiction, they typically respond in one of two ineffective ways: they either rely on willpower to resist temptation or uninstall distracting apps. However, willpower fluctuates and weakens throughout the day, and nothing prevents us from reinstalling deleted apps. Instead, we need to plan for moments of weakness. By committing to your digital well-being in advance, you can avoid unnecessary decision fatigue.
StayFree helps you control phone addiction by allowing you to set Daily Usage Limits for selected apps. For example, if you want to stop doomscrolling through TikTok reels, you can set a 5-minute Daily Usage Limit. Once you exceed this limit, StayFree will block your access to TikTok for the rest of the day. You can also set limits for app categories (e.g., social media and entertainment), specific websites, and even URL keywords. The StayFree dashboard provides time-bound statistics about your phone usage, giving you a clear overview of your digital habits. Fortunately, the app has a password protection feature that prevents you from editing your Daily Usage Limits. StayFree also released a new batch of features that let you block specific sections of apps like feeds on Instagram and short videos on YouTube.
The reason we haven’t discussed uninstalling apps yet is that StayFree can only manage apps that are installed on your phone. It cannot, for instance, create a Daily Usage Limit for LinkedIn if it isn’t already installed. Additionally, setting limits before uninstalling apps ensures that they remain restricted even if you reinstall them. This limitation has more to do with how smartphones function behind the scenes than with StayFree’s design.
To set a Daily Usage Limit for an app, follow these steps:
- Open the StayFree app
- Navigate to “Daily Usage Limits” in the menu
- Tap “Add Usage Limit” and select “App Usage Limit”
- Use the dropdown to select an application
- Use the time widget to set a time limit (zero minutes would be completely blocking)
- Tap “Save” and say goodbye to procrastination
Deciding which apps to limit, block, or leave untouched is a personal choice. Through trial and error, you’ll find a configuration that protects your digital well-being without being overly restrictive. I suggest completely blocking social media apps since you can message friends through Beeper. Additionally, consider blocking news apps, video games, and distracting websites like adult content. I’m a bit extreme—I even block the Google Play Store to prevent myself from installing apps outside my StayFree restrictions. I block all browsers except one, Brave, which I limit to 10 minutes for emergency access.
After creating your Daily Usage Limits, the final step is setting a password. StayFree’s password protection feature only accepts a numerical code of 15 digits, if I’m not mistaken. Your password must be complex enough that you can’t memorize it and inaccessible enough that it’s inconvenient to retrieve. Get creative with this part of the system—the goal is to create enough friction that bypassing your StayFree restrictions becomes unappealing and difficult. Here are two strategies I recommend:
- Text File on a USB Drive — I generate a random digit password using a password generator. I save this password in a text file named “password” on a USB drive. Then, I stash the USB in an out-of-the-way spot in my living space, like a hidden kitchen drawer or closet shelf. This way, when I’m tempted to bypass my StayFree restrictions, I’d have to physically move instead of just opening a tab. Pro tip: Disable your clipboard history or delete the recent entry to prevent cheating.
- Find Numbers in a Physical Space — For example, I live two minutes from a coffee shop with a wall mural. The artist’s phone number is marked at the bottom of the mural. I use this number as my StayFree password. It’s long enough and irrelevant enough that I can’t memorize it. If I want to bypass my StayFree restrictions, I’d have to leave my apartment, walk to the café, find the mural, and enter the number.
Decide Which Apps to Uninstall Using This Checklist
Now that you’ve limited your screen time, it’s time to declutter. Think back toYou’re now ready to declutter your digital space. Think back to the beginning of this guide where we reminisced about older cellphones and their simplicity. We want to transform our smartphone into a device that’s primarily for communication, along with modern-day essentials. Since it can be challenging to determine what’s essential, I’ve created a few questions to help kick-start the decluttering process. Pick an app on your phone and ask yourself these questions:
- Did I completely block this app with StayFree (limit set to zero minutes)?
- Do I rarely use this app or did I forget it existed on my phone?
- Does this app cause me anxiety or distract me from my daily life?
- Could I use this app or service more efficiently on my computer?
- Does this app have no effect on my transportation or communications?
If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, chances are you can uninstall the selected app without major consequences. This questionnaire is designed to become more lenient as you go down the list. So if you reach Questions 4 or 5 with your app, keeping it on your phone isn’t a dealbreaker. For example, a social media app, a loyalty program app, a news app, a banking app, and a mobile game would fail our test respectively. Question 5 helps us identify legitimately useful tools, such as ridesharing and navigation apps like Uber and Google Maps.
Simplify Your Phone’s Experience with OLauncher (Android Only)
One of the benefits of having an Android smartphone is customization, especially the ability to use custom app launchers. These launchers change the aesthetic and function of your phone’s home screens, icons, and app drawer. App developers design icons to be recognizable and visually appealing. When opening your phone, each app icon cries for your attention—”Pick me!”—like candy bars in a grocery checkout aisle. What’s worse are those pesky icon badges that fuel a compulsion to clear our notifications or click on an app.
OLauncher turns your Android smartphone into a breath of fresh air by transforming those cluttered icons and widgets into a simple list of your favorite apps. This minimalist design helps reduce distractions and keeps navigation straightforward, using basic gestures to access drawers and settings. OLauncher also lets you hide specific apps from view, which is great for discouraging access to StayFree and ensuring apps on your home screen don’t show up in your app drawer, removing redundancy. For apps I find useful but use only occasionally, like Splitwise, Airbnb, and Airalo for traveling, I hide them away from sight.
Just install the app, and you’ll immediately notice a remarkable difference in how you use your smartphone. OLauncher is completely free and comes with premium features for further customization.
Change Your Phone to Black and White
The final step is adding a black-and-white filter to your smartphone. Color is a powerful stimulus that greatly shapes our visual experience. Imagine your favorite fast food burger, for example, a Big Mac from McDonald’s. Picture the charcoal brown of the meat, the sharp cheddar yellow of the cheese, the refreshing green of the lettuce, the comforting beige of the buns holding everything together, and the white specks of sesame seeds on top. Now, imagine that same burger without its colors, and suddenly this mouth-watering hamburger doesn’t entice you as much. When we remove color from visual stimuli, their effect on us lessens. We can apply this concept to our smartphone experience, where we spend too much time looking at photoshopped and filtered images. Furthermore, applying a black-and-white filter to your smartphone can save a little battery if your phone has an OLED/AMOLED screen because black pixels are effectively off. Color filter settings are generally accessed through accessibility settings on both Android and iPhone. You can find many written and video tutorials on this topic.
Closing Thoughts
Congratulations on transforming your smartphone! These changes help make your phone less of a distraction and more of a tool that serves you. Remember, it’s not just about taking away distractions but also finding healthier alternatives that fulfill you without relying on technology—like taking a walk, reading, or journaling. Finding hobbies that don’t require constant stimulation is the key to a successful lifestyle change.
Even if you only adopt one of these suggestions, you’ll be on your way to improved digital well-being, reduced screen time, and a more intentional relationship with technology. Remember, the goal of digital minimalism isn’t to strip away everything—it’s to use technology in ways that enrich rather than enslave you.