On: Turn Your iPhone into a Dumb Phone

[adamwong246]

This is the only sane approach. I have reduced my smartphone to a dumb-phone just by removing the apps that suck my attention. But the worst is youtube. You can live without social media but YT has become such a cornerstone that you cannot even uninstall it.

[claar → adamwong246]

On Android phones, you can uninstall system apps using adb:

  # adb shell

  $ pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.android.chrome
  $ pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.youtube

To reinstall:

  $ pm install-existing com.android.chrome
  $ pm install-existing com.google.android.youtube

[realfeel78 → adamwong246]

> the worst is youtube. You can live without social media but YT has become such a cornerstone that you cannot even uninstall it.

Abjectly false.

[toast0 → adamwong246]

I'm not sure I fully agree about youtube. Yes --- if you're fixing stuff, you end up having to watch youtube. But that's so bad, it's easy (for me) to continue to avoid it. Although, occasionally I do get pulled in to interesting looking videos. But when they start asking me to like and subscribe (which is often!), that's a good trigger to close the thing.