I was just talking about this with someone this past weekend. For me, it has been removing most “smart” features from my phone.
I’ve disabled Chrome, so I can no longer access the internet.
I’ve disabled the “google” app, so I don’t have a back-door to the internet, as that seems to have a browser built in. This also disables voice to text, which I never used anyway.
No social media, games, etc. of any kind.
The only thing I use my phone now is calling/texting, navigation, music, a calendar, and a notes app. It’s taken me a long time to get here, almost 3 years at this point, but being able to take my phone out, use it for the one intentional thing I need, then put it away… It’s so liberating. I use Olauncher, which is a minimal text-based home screen, and it also tracks your daily screen-time and displays it on the home-screen. I’m down to around 30-45 minutes MAX of screen time per day. Most days its 15 or below.
I was just talking about this with someone this past weekend. For me, it has been removing most “smart” features from my phone.
The only thing I use my phone now is calling/texting, navigation, music, a calendar, and a notes app. It’s taken me a long time to get here, almost 3 years at this point, but being able to take my phone out, use it for the one intentional thing I need, then put it away… It’s so liberating. I use Olauncher, which is a minimal text-based home screen, and it also tracks your daily screen-time and displays it on the home-screen. I’m down to around 30-45 minutes MAX of screen time per day. Most days its 15 or below.
If you use the F-Droid repository, you can install the fubo keyboard, which does voice-to-text locally, through a whisper client.
It is different than the Google client, but it’s good enough, and the fact that it increases and respects privacy makes me much more happy.