In 2024, I wrote about my smartphone app audit. I did it again this year, this time upgrading from the Pixel 8 to the Pixel 10 Pro.
Last year, I used a new phone as a chance to ask myself, what apps do I have installed, and why?
In particular, my goal was to remove the apps from my life that are time wasters and pure distractions.
As I suggested in that original post, I start by taking screenshots of all my apps. Two scrolling screenshots did the trick this year.
In order to get a nice extract, I had to use ocrmypdf like last time.
❯ convert -alpha off app-screenshot.png app-screenshot.png
❯ ocrmypdf app-screenshot.png \
--image-dpi 300 \
--sidecar app-names.txt \
app-screenshot-OCR.pdf
I then fed the sidecar files and OCR’ed PDFs to ChatGPT5 with this prompt:
These PDFs are screenshots of my app launcher on my Pixel 8, with ocrmypdf text layer over them. I also attached txt files of the sidecar OCR text of each. Make me a table of all the apps installed on my phone, in the same order as they appear here. When you aren’t sure about the app, put a ✱ there. Note that it’s in alphabetical order so the document that starts with 1Password is the first one.
This gave me a clean table with 202 apps. Still a shocking number this year. Last year, I recorded that I had 200+ apps installed before my audit, and about 160 apps afterwards.
The modest growth in my installed apps (+40 or so) came from:
- utility apps related to knowledge work on my startup, PX, e.g. Notion, Notion Calendar, Dropbox, Sunsama, GitHub
- building access and network security apps related to a local coworking space + office I now work out of regularly
- a few new privacy apps, like ProtonVPN, Brave, Keybase
- AI/LLM apps beyond ChatGPT, e.g. Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM, Perplexity
- Android utilities that solve minor problems, e.g. Macrodroid, AccuBattery, ScreenZen, WiFiman
- some mobile audio experiments, e.g. Speechify, Patreon, Hark, Libro.fm, Libby
- some retail/travel apps that I now keep installed, but “archived”
Let’s quickly discuss “archiving” apps. That’s via the Android “Archive App” feature. This keeps the app “virtually” installed on your device — with an app icon and your user data still available — but puts it on a permanent pause. Thus it doesn’t utilize device resources when not used.
I’ve decided to use that to good effect this year. Some examples here are:
- Delta Airlines app (for booking flights occasionally)
- SIXT car rental app (for travel car rentals occasionally)
- AllTrails
- TripAdvisor
- Airbnb
I only use travel apps episodically, but it’s convenient that when I need them, I don’t need to hunt them down in the app store or reconfigure my login accounts.
Here was the prompt I used to enhance this table of 200+ apps with my category codes, so I could find the time wasters:
Add column with two letter code.
- utilities (UU)
- private group chat or direct messaging (DM)
- social media, time wasting, or distraction (XX)
Examples of “XX” are Instagram and Reddit.
I don’t count the following as XX: web browsers; photography apps like Flickr or Google Photos; AI/LLM chatbots; Netflix style streaming apps; Patreon/Audible/Speechify style audio apps; Kindle/Instapaper reading apps; Meetup/Tock/Resy reservation apps. To me, these are all utilities (UU).
A few XX apps had snuck back in from last year, namely: Instagram and Reddit. I did some reflection about why.
For Instagram, I haven’t made any Instagram posts since May 2022. But I still lurk wildlife photographers and local Tampa, FL businesses on Instagram. So this is less a social media app, in my usage, and more an “interesting hyper-personalized photo recommender” app.
It’s also perhaps the only “jokey” or “friendly” social network from which my wife and I occasionally trade memes via DM. So it deserves to be kept, even if limited, for that.
I dislike Instagram’s iPad experience — it’s TikTok-like, so that’s a big “-1” from me. I also dislike their web experience — which is simply limited and weird. So, I suspect that is those factors pushed me to reinstall the Android app.
Here was my compromise: instead of uninstalling Instagram altogether, I added it to my ScreenZen block list. This is a new “usage restriction” app I adopted this year as an alternative to the “one sec” app I mentioned last year.
It’s similar to “one sec” — it has the option to add a “friction timer” to the start of any restricted apps. But it’s also more featureful and more actively developed across iOS and Android. Here are some of my apps that sit in the ScreenZen monitored/restricted list: Reddit, YouTube, Google News, Perch (news), Financial Times, Economist.
Reddit is perhaps the one I’m most on the fence about.
I have to say that of all so-called “social media,” Reddit is the one with sentimental staying power for me. Since scrolling randomly in there is probably not the healthiest thing I could do on my phone… I likewise restrict its usage via my ScreenZen block list.
But there are occasional posts on certain sub-reddits — including deeply technical programmer ones — where I am glad I don’t have the app blocked.
It’s true that I could limit Reddit to browsing on desktop (like the old days!), since Reddit’s web app, when logged in, is fully featured.
Thankfully, I don’t use TikTok, Snapchat, or BeReal, and I never plan to start, for various reasons. I also stay away from Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and the like, to whatever extent I can.
Here were the time-wasting apps that I killed in 2024, which, I am happy to say, remain uninstalled from last year: Bluesky; Mastodon; Discord; Facebook; Threads; LinkedIn; Netflix; NYTimes; Readwise Reader; Prime Video; Steam; Substack; Washington Post; X (Twitter); YouTube Music.
I can’t even imagine how many hours were “saved” over the past year thanks to last year’s audit!
I deleted or archived around 20 other apps in this year’s audit, so my app count dropped to 180, or so, from over 200.
How about the direct messaging and group messaging apps? This ecosystem remains fragmented, and as an Android user, I have to meet folks where they are, as Apple iMessage supremacy abounds.
This includes the classics: Signal, WhatsApp, Google Messages.
But it also includes Telegram and Element, where I keep in touch with certain real-life programmer communities.
I also have a few email apps installed these days: not just the classic Gmail, but also Fastmail and Thunderbird. This is due to some email needs on my new startup. That’s OK.
It’s time to discuss the “mindless scrolling” or “mindless listening” apps that I am keeping on my phone, but that I severely limit with ScreenZen.
YouTube. I simply get too much utility out of YouTube, and the truth is, I rarely listen to bad content in YouTube when I’m on mobile. Examples of content I follow here include tech talks, tech conference recordings, podcast interviews with open source folks. I also leverage YouTube Premium’s support for background listening when on walks.
Financial Times & The Economist. I’m finding these to be extremely valuable paid news sources. Though they have nice Android apps, I can also go a little too deep with this newsy content. I am not sure it’s 100% healthy for me.
Audible / Libro.fm / Libby Audiobooks / Hark. Though audiobooks can be nutricious, they can also be a form of “talk radio,” (or podcasts by disguise)… and I already decided to kill my mobile use of Pocketcasts last year. I still use Pocketcasts a little… but ONLY on my iPad. This keeps it very much limited, since my iPad is my most rarely used device. (My main iPad use case is to read technical ebook PDFs via GoodReader, or to take notes via Apple Pencil + GoodNotes, or to act as a simple Markdown typewriter via iA Writer + Simplenote.) My plan was to treat audiobooks the same way I treated other time-wasting apps, and restrict their usage altogether. I snuck audiobook listening onto my phone because I do a lot of long walks or errands with an earbud in. As I’ll discuss below, I might just want to train myself out of this habit entirely in 2026. I’d like to take more meditative and silent walks anyway.
Spotify. Podcasts snuck in via Spotify for me this year from January – October, but by November, I just uninstalled the app altogether. Yep! Just cold turkey: “good-bye Spotify.” I kept Spotify on my phone ostensibly to have access to music, e.g. for programming. But I found it too tempting to use it for podcasts, too. So it needed to go. Now when I listen to music, I use my iPad and headphones paired with my iPad (usually Apple Airpods or Bose 700 noise cancellation OE headphones). Or, I use a Spotify desktop app from Linux.
Speechify. This was a new entrant for me this year, and perhaps got me into a negative “podcast-like loop” since it can convert long-form articles into AI-narrated audio plays. I guess what happened here is that I was so impressed with the technology and core user experience (despite some bugs and growing pains) that I overused the app. The fact that text can so easily be turned into high-quality audio narration is perhaps a double-edged sword for me, as someone who enjoys deep reading but doesn’t enjoy doing that deep reading on a smartphone. Basically, this let me turn essays into podcasts automatically. Is that a good thing? I’m not sure. In any case, I stuck it in ScreenZen to keep an eye on my usage of it.
I have some apps that are part of content loops, but that are more informational. Thus these behave much more like utilities. These include:
- Instapaper. I mainly use it as a “/dev/null for internet content.”
- Raindrop.io. I use this as a second “/dev/null for internet content” — that is, when the content isn’t text-oriented, e.g. code, interactives, videos.
- Readwise. The OG quote saver and deep reading “memory extension” app. I use it to jot down interesting quotes, and also auto-sync Kindle highlights and Instapaper highlights. This is probably my favorite single utility app.
I don’t think these apps have to be limited in any way, because, the way I’m using them, they are almost entirely “write-only” media. That is, I save stuff to Instapaper, Raindrop.io, and Readwise. I hardly scroll them on the reader side, and I don’t ever get stuck in a addictive content loop with any of these apps.
Reflecting on my usage, I think I’ve done a good job of excluding all apps that would encourage mindless scrolling in strange short-form content feeds, but I don’t think I’ve done a good job of avoiding long-form essays and news, especially by leaning a lot on long-form text audio narrations (via modern text-to-speech techniques, e.g. Speechify).
That’s something I have to think about revising this year as I look forward to a 2026 audit.
My wife catches me sometimes in a deep text/reading hole. But she also sometimes just catches me with an earbud in, listening to an audiobook/podcast when doing an errand. Might it be better if the earbud wasn’t in at all? Yes. This is something I’ve wanted to want, and now, finally, I believe it’s something I truly want. I’ll try to move in that direction in 2026.
Upon reflection, I believe our dopamine-starved brain always finds a way to consume the infinite internet content stream. Thus vigilance is always needed. The inclination is to “amuse ourselves to death.” To choose creation over consumption is an affirmative and radical act. It’s an assertion of your independent-mindedness and your human autonomy. It takes effort.
Last year, I got a lot of mileage out of simply uninstalling apps that encouraged mindless scrolling.
This year, I don’t have that low-hanging fruit available any longer. My uninstall spree was more like a clean-up, or a tune-up. So I have to be more intentional with all of my content habits overall. Especially pernicious ones that are mimicking my old bad habits.
The core example here: that my “mindless scrolling” has been replaced, to some extent, with “mindless listening.” Hmph! This is worth not just reflection, but immediate action. I’m of a mind to banish all my audio-oriented apps entirely.
In any case… this audit helped me figure out that the status quo isn’t good enough. I need to do more and be better.
I plan to keep an annual habit of doing a smartphone app audit. It helps me to be more intentional with my phone.
For everyone who followed along to the end… stay focused and distraction-free out there! If you can! I can certainly empathize with you when you lament that “it’s easier said than done.”