I Deleted Almost Every App on My iPhone

I deleted almost every application from my iPhone. This was the largest cleanup since I bought the iPhone 4S, and the result feels surprisingly good. Not only because the phone looks cleaner, but because I no longer have to make so many tiny decisions every time I unlock it. I had an app for everything. Some of them solved problems I did not have. Others performed tasks I needed once every six months. A few were installed because somebody recommended them, I read an enthusiastic review, or the icon looked as though the company had spent money on it.

I was suffering from a severe case of appitis. The main symptom was getting lost inside my own phone. Every application competed for a place on the first Home Screen. The losers were moved to the second one, then the third, and eventually into folders where they could continue occupying storage without having to confront the possibility that I would never open them again. Now I use two screens. The second is not even full.

I kept the applications that are genuinely useful and removed the rest. It turns out that a phone becomes easier to use when it does not contain a small software representation of every passing interest you have had since buying it. A remarkable discovery.

An app for everything

My first attempt at organization was architectural. I arranged the icons carefully across the Home Screens and left one or two empty spaces on each page to give the interface some air. This was the digital equivalent of arranging furniture in a room that should probably contain less furniture. Eventually, I had six full screens. At that point, I began asking the obvious question: why?

I am surrounded by Wi-Fi most of the time. When Wi-Fi is unavailable, I can usually use 3G. If I suddenly need a particular service, I can often use its website. When the website is not enough, I can download the app, use it, and delete it afterward. There is no reason to keep every possible tool installed in anticipation of a theoretical emergency. I do not carry every tool I own in my pockets when I leave the house. Apparently I had decided software followed different laws of physics.

My second attempt was to place everything into folders. This was worse. Folders initially look like organization because the number of visible icons decreases. In reality, they allow you to preserve the entire mess behind small, respectable labels such as Utilities, Productivity, and Other. Other is where software goes to wait for death.

After a while, my Home Screen looked like a Mandelbrot fractal. Every folder contained more icons, which represented more applications, which contained more menus, which led to more features I had installed and forgotten. The phone was technically organized. So is a warehouse.

Apple’s untouchable apps

The cleanup also reminded me of something I had stopped noticing: at the time, Apple did not let me delete its built-in applications. Even the ones I never used had permanent residency. I had replaced most of Apple’s default apps with alternatives from other companies, but the originals could not be removed. The only available strategy was exile. I created a folder for them and placed it on the last Home Screen, far away from productive society. This was not deletion, but it had the emotional benefits of deletion.

Apple did not begin allowing users to remove built-in applications from the Home Screen until later versions of iOS, and actual deletion support expanded afterward. In 2013, hiding the unwanted apps in a folder was the standard form of negotiation. Almost every application I use regularly comes from another company. This is not an ideological position. I simply found tools that worked better for me.

The strange part is that I still had to keep Apple’s alternatives installed, like guests who had arrived with the apartment and could not legally be asked to leave.

The multitasking drawer of shame

Another feature that became interesting during the cleanup was the application switcher. On the iPhone 4S, pressing the Home button twice revealed a horizontal row of recently used apps. Mine appeared to contain almost everything I had opened since the invention of electricity. At first glance, it looked as though the phone was running all of them. It was not. Applications could remain suspended or perform limited background work depending on their capabilities. The switcher was primarily a way to return to recently used apps, not a live process monitor showing one hundred tiny programs desperately consuming the battery. Apple still describes most backgrounded applications as moving into a suspended state after a short period.

Even so, I rarely found the switcher useful. The Home Screens already showed my apps more clearly, and both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 opened the applications I used quickly enough that I did not notice much practical difference.

My usage also did not depend heavily on returning to unfinished tasks. I was not pausing a game for several hours or leaving long documents open. I usually entered an app, completed a small action, and left. For that kind of behavior, the switcher felt like another inventory of software.

This does not mean Apple should remove multitasking. Other people use their phones differently, and the ability to return to an interrupted task is obviously valuable. It means that, for me, the feature was solving a problem I did not have very often.

Technology products contain many features like this. They are useful in general, praised in reviews, and completely irrelevant to the way a particular person uses the device. The dangerous part begins when we assume that having a feature means we must organize our behavior around it.

Too many choices in a small rectangle

The most valuable result of the cleanup was not additional storage. It was removing choices. Before deleting the apps, I would unlock the phone and see several possible tools for the same task. Different photography apps. Different note-taking apps. Different services for reading, writing, sharing, saving, and organizing things I would later forget to read.

Each choice was trivial. Together, they created friction. Which app should I use? Where did I save that note? Was the article in the reading service, the browser bookmarks, the notes app, or the other reading service I installed because it had a pleasant typeface?

The phone was supposed to make small tasks easier. Instead, I had created a tiny bureaucracy. This is one of the strange effects of cheap software. Installing something costs almost nothing. There is no physical object entering the house, no shelf becoming crowded, and no box to throw away. So we accumulate. The cost arrives later, paid through attention.

Every icon asks for a small amount of consideration. Every notification requests another. Every service creates another place where information may live. None of these demands is serious enough to notice alone. That is how they win.

Downloading is not a commitment

I used to treat installing an app as a permanent decision. Once it was on the phone, I assumed it should remain there in case I needed it again. This is the same logic used to preserve old cables in a drawer because one of them might belong to a device manufactured in 2006. But downloading an application is not a commitment. The App Store keeps a record of previous purchases. Reinstalling something is easy. Most services preserve their data online. If I need an app again, I can bring it back. This changes the calculation.

I no longer need to ask whether an application might someday be useful. Almost anything might someday be useful. I only need to ask whether it deserves to occupy my phone today. That is a much better question. The answer is usually no.

The next target is my music library

The next step may be removing most of the MP3 files stored on the phone and using an online music service instead. Spotify is the obvious candidate, although I still have reservations. Its catalog does not contain everything I listen to, and offline listening means keeping some music on the device anyway. Streaming also depends on coverage, which becomes less theoretical when traveling through places where 3G apparently becomes shy. Still, the service becomes more interesting every day.

A hybrid approach might make sense: streaming for normal use, with selected music stored locally before traveling somewhere with poor coverage. This follows the same principle as the application cleanup. I do not need to carry everything all the time. I need access to the things that matter under the conditions where I will use them.Ownership and permanent local storage once felt like the only reliable system. Services are gradually making that assumption less useful. Not entirely obsolete, but less useful. I am not yet prepared to entrust my entire music library to a company and a radio signal. I have worked with enough servers to understand the emotional value of a local copy.

A calmer phone

The experiment restored a little order to my daily life. That may sound excessive for an exercise involving icons, but the phone is an object I look at dozens of times a day. Small amounts of disorder become repetitive. Small decisions become habitual. A cleaner Home Screen does not transform life. It does remove a few unnecessary negotiations from it.

Now, when I unlock the phone, the applications I see are there because I use them. I do not need folders containing abandoned experiments, old recommendations, or tools kept for imaginary emergencies.

The phone has become a tool again instead of an archive of software I once found interesting. This is part of a larger battle I have with organization. I want fewer things demanding attention, fewer places to search, and fewer decisions that produce no meaningful result. Deleting applications is a small victory. But small victories are useful, especially when they fit in your pocket. Look at your phone.

There is probably an application you have not opened in a year. There may be twenty. Some might no longer work. Others may duplicate tools you already prefer. Several are probably waiting inside a folder named Utilities, hoping that the name makes them indispensable. Delete them. You can always install them again. Your phone will not miss them. Your head probably will not either.