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I recently did a smartphone app audit and deleted 18 apps I classified as "social media, time wasting, and distraction." I deleted another 40 or so apps that we

I recently did a smartphone app audit and deleted 18 apps I classified as "social media, time wasting, and distraction." I deleted another 40 or so apps that were only occasionally useful, and that I could just install later if/when needed. As part of that process, I personally found that the full set of app categories useful for an audit are: A) essential (e.g. PW manager, email, maps, calendar) B) direct and group messaging (e.g. Signal, Element, Telegram, WhatsApp) C) social media, time wasting, distraction (serves no other real purpose other than to kill time, e.g. Facebook, Instagram) D) episodic utilities (e.g. Airbnb, TripAdvisor) E) always-on utilities (e.g. Venmo, Uber) When you do this categorization, with a strong will, you can uninstall everything in categories C and D and end up with a much more utilitarian phone, primarily using the stuff in A and B. I find that when you work on companies or projects, Slack and Discord are the tricky ones, because of how noisy they are but also how much people expect to be able to reach you there, especially via their DMs feature, which many use in lieu of email. I'm experimenting with the Texts.com app to work around this edge case. That is, keep Slack/Discord DMs visible via Texts.com app, but only use full Slack/Discord channels when on desktop when I am in a "channel skimming mood," via the desktop apps only. Haven't tried this fully yet on mobile since their Android app is still under development. Anyway, I wrote up my personal experience with a smartphone app audit here: https://amontalenti.com/2024/03/26/the-smartphone-app-audit https://amontalenti.com/2024/03/26/the-smartphone-app-audit

naravara 2y ago
> D) episodic utilities (e.g. Airbnb, TripAdvisor) I sort of struggle to think of the utility of these being installed apps. I feel like just doing a better job of designing web pages to run on mobile would be fine for booking a hotel. Notifications and location tracking is all you’d be missing, but that’s not THAT big of a deal. Those are both doable with PWAs now, and even before they were you could have just done it through email or SMS if you really had to. There’s a lot of stuff where I just don’t feel like it needs to be an app and would be better off just a service that runs through a well designed website.
- pixelmonkey 2y ago
  Yea, I agree. Part of the reason I used "episodic" as a category was to uninstall 100% of my episodic apps and only reinstall when/if needed.
  - medstrom 2y ago
    Venmo and Uber are also episodic. Personally I'd lump D and E into a big folder, no need to constantly be reinstalling the same thing.
    - naravara 2y ago
      iOS at least offloads the seldom used apps, so it sort of automates the pruning. You’re basically left with a quick-link to redownload the thing.
Contortion 2y ago
I had a very similar experience when changing my email address. I went through my password manager to update my accounts and ended up liberally deleting all the accounts I don't use regularly. I honestly found it to be very 'freeing' and therapeutic.

naravara 2y ago

> D) episodic utilities (e.g. Airbnb, TripAdvisor) I sort of struggle to think of the utility of these being installed apps. I feel like just doing a better job of designing web pages to run on mobile would be fine for booking a hotel. Notifications and location tracking is all you’d be missing, but that’s not THAT big of a deal. Those are both doable with PWAs now, and even before they were you could have just done it through email or SMS if you really had to. There’s a lot of stuff where I just don’t feel like it needs to be an app and would be better off just a service that runs through a well designed website.

pixelmonkey 2y ago
Yea, I agree. Part of the reason I used "episodic" as a category was to uninstall 100% of my episodic apps and only reinstall when/if needed.
- medstrom 2y ago
  Venmo and Uber are also episodic. Personally I'd lump D and E into a big folder, no need to constantly be reinstalling the same thing.
  - naravara 2y ago
    iOS at least offloads the seldom used apps, so it sort of automates the pruning. You’re basically left with a quick-link to redownload the thing.

Contortion 2y ago

I had a very similar experience when changing my email address. I went through my password manager to update my accounts and ended up liberally deleting all the accounts I don't use regularly. I honestly found it to be very 'freeing' and therapeutic.