How to Turn Your Smartphone Into a Dumb Phone

There’s such a thing as too much phone. Use these methods to silence notifications, eliminate distractions, and collar time-wasting apps. When the smartphone era began with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007 and the App Store a year later, part of the thrill of these devices was the sheer number of things they could do. Nearly two decades on, having a constantly distracting gadget that can do everything doesn't seem like quite such a good idea. Some people have been turning back to feature phones to escape social media, instant messaging, and an endless barrage of content (now produced by AI as well as human beings). But there’s no need to buy a new device to achieve dumb-phone zen; by installing some apps and tweaking some of your phone’s settings, you can slow the data deluge and reclaim some brain cycles.

The iPhone Experience

One of the most comprehensive apps I've found for turning an iPhone into a dumb phone is the aptly named Dumb Phone. It creates a text-based launch menu for just your most essential apps while hiding everything else—including icons and notification badges—from view. Dumb Phone uses a simple interface, which you can customize. After choosing the apps you want access to (up to six per screen), you need to add the Dumb Phone widget to a home screen: Tap and hold on a blank area of the screen, then choose Edit and Add Widget to do this. Spacer widgets are also included to tweak the layout.

Setup and Customization

To fully transform the interface, you need to add the dark Dumb Phone wallpaper (Wallpaper in Settings), switch to dark mode (Display & Brightness in Settings), and turn off home screen animations:

  • From Settings select Accessibility > Per-App Settings > Add App > Home Screen & App Library, then tap Home Screen & App Library and Reduce Motion, and set it to On.
  • With all of that taken care of, you need to hide other home screen app shortcuts, which you can do by pressing and holding on them, then choosing Remove App and Remove from Home Screen.

You should be left with just your Dumb Phone widget and nothing else on a single home screen—though all of your apps are still available if you swipe left to get to the App Library. Other settings in the Dumb Phone app let you customize which apps are available through the widget and change the look of the widget itself—including the alignment of the text and the spacing between each shortcut. In addition, the app gives you the option of creating separate profiles for your widgets—one for work and one for outside of work, for example—which you can quickly swap between as needed.

Solutions for Android Users

For Android users, the Minimalist Phone app is one of the best options available for this particular job. Minimalist Phone is what's known as a launcher: a type of Android app that completely replaces most of the interface, including the home screens and menus. It's a full reskin of your phone, and one that goes deeper into the operating system than anything that's possible on iOS (but don't worry, you can go back to normal whenever you want to with just a few taps).

Minimalist Phone offers a straightforward, clean interface. During setup, the philosophy behind Minimalist Phone will be explained to you, and you'll then need to approve the permissions the app needs to transform the look of Android. For the full dumb phone experience, you might want to play around with some of the notification settings too.

Comparison of App Costs and Trials

If you're ready for a quieter life and keen to dumb down your smartphone, here is the relevant data regarding these tools:

  • Dumb Phone (iOS): Pricing starts at $3 per month (you can also pay yearly, or $25 for a lifetime of use), but there's a seven-day free trial available so you can see if you like it first before spending any money.
  • Minimalist Phone (Android): It'll cost you $5 a month, though it's less if you pay for a year at a time, and you can get a lifetime's use out of the app for $30. There's also a seven-day free trial that lets you see if you find the app useful before paying.