You don’t have to sacrifice the convenience of a smartphone to stop getting distracted by your phone all day. With this new feature from iOS 17 you can turn your iPhone into a dumb phone — and back. Whenever you want to! ✴
The problem: Smartphones are a constant distraction right on our work desk
Wow, did I just spend 30 minutes scrolling instead of fixing this presentation?
You know the feeling when you look up from your phone after 20 minutes of doom-scrolling on Instagram, staring confused at your laptop screen, trying to figure out what you were about to-do? Or what you were doing before? This happens a lot. To all of us.
Smartphones, while being essential tools in our everyday lives, often disrupt our focus. Phenomenons like “Compulsive Checking”, the psychology of notifications and how all of that heavily disrupts our flow state is already researched and backed by studies. As well as the fact that we need the flow state to solve difficult or complex tasks.
But how can we keep our Smartphones as essential tool without this huge downside of distinctiveness? Because I don’t know about you, but I am so done with losing all of this time on staring into the nothingness of my phone instead of getting stuff done or doing something in the real world.
Well, it seems like Apple — without knowing it — just released the best tool yet to strike back in the war of attention and productive, focused working.
So, why not just switch to a Dumb Phone?!
Let’s just live like people did 20 years ago? Nah, I don’t think so.
Now that I complain so much: switching to an old Nokia phone after putting my iPhone on eBay seems like the obvious solution, doesn’t it?
Let’s think about it for a second. Imagine living without your phone in 2023. You would basically renounce the technological progress of the last decade. Tools for office work like 2-factor-authentification and mobile banking as well as convenient features like GPS maps, camera access, music streaming and FaceTime calls with your family are all gone then. A big sacrifice to make.
I mean, it is possible. In theory, you’d just have to invest 3 days to substitute all things your smartphone currently does for you with other gadgets and your new Nokia.
But is that really it? Imagine running around with a high quality camera, a huge wallet, a bag for your concert tickets, a little mirror, a banking tan list, your to-do list and such much more. This feels so inconvenient that I’d rather be glued to my phone all day than having to deal with all of these I-don’t-have-a-smartphone issues.
What is so bad about existing solutions or apps to regain focus while working?
I tried so many different apps and things and TLDR, none of the solutions did work for me
While having great approaches, most of these apps fall short in the long run. They’re so limited due to Apple’s Guidelines that they just can’t fundamentally change how we interact with our devices.
All of these approaches are united by the same issues: you can either turn all restrictions off easily, OR the restriction is so big that you just can’t access your phone at all. But none of these existing apps (can) really fundamentally change the addictiveness of smartphones without taking it away from you.
As a result, the best case scenario is that these apps do not really change anything in your current behavior except for making you click away a disruptive element. The worst case scenario means that you have to wait 20 minutes until you can open your Google Drive account because your phone is locked into a tupperware box.
The solution? Assistive Access, a switch to turn your iPhone into a Dumb Phone — and back.
Turn your iPhone into a Dumb Phone with the “Assistive Access” feature
With iOS 17 Apple released a bunch of new features. They didn’t really highlight the most interesting one, though.
The “Assistive Access” feature is “particularly useful for older people who might not be very tech-savvy, as a simpler interface can be greatly beneficial for them”. Well yes, it’s a great feature having older people in mind.
However, it might be even more useful for constantly distracted office workers that work with their phone next to them all the time.
So what does “Assistive Access” actually do? Basically it turns your smartphone temporarily into a better version of a dumb phone. Your phone in “Assistive Access” can still do all the things you need it to do. However, due to the massive change in the user experience and the limited app access, this mode is going to keep you from picking up your phone all the time.
The best thing, though: you can just turn this mode off again and use your phone like a normal person again. On the train back home from work, you’ll already be able to doom-scroll through your timelines again.
How to turn your iPhone into a dumb phone with Apple’s Assistive Access feature
With these 4 main factors in mind you’ll be able to turn your iPhone into a dumb phone with 3 simple clicks:
1 Curate the apps you want to be able to use
When setting up the “Assistive Access” feature for the first time, you have to select between the apps you want to be able while using this mode. I’d suggest you add the tools you really need to get your work done — and nothing more.
I for example use:
- To-do App (Asana)
- Messenger (WhatsApp)
- Music Streaming (Spotify)
- Notes App (Apple Notes)
- Banking Apps (Qonto)
- Camera
- Phone App (lol)
- Safari
- Maps
- Find My
- Authenticator App
- and of course ChatGPT (this is yet another issue to discuss in another article 🥲)
With these apps in my dump phone portfolio, I never had to switch back to the normal iPhone experience during my work.
Make sure to cover all the basics you need to survive and get stuff done in your Assistive Access.
2 Transform your home screen into a dumb phone UI with 3 clicks
Once you activate Assistive Access you’re going to see how your fancy expensive iOS 17 iPhone transforms into a phone that looks like you’ve bought it on Amazon for $62 from a company named “YouPhone”.
Great. You only see a very limited amount of apps at the same time, can’t randomly open your notification center or other distractions. It’s basically like picking up your Nokia back in 2004. You look at it, realize there is nothing to do, and put it back in your pocket.
Activate Assistive Access as your default assistive feature, to turn your phone into a dumb phone when clicking the power button 3 times.
3 Limit the joy of using applications to a minimum
After opening your first app, you will realize how little joy is left in using apps. There is a HUGE back button at the button of the screen. Every element in the different apps just got way bigger and looks weird.
You can’t switch fast between your different apps, opening and closing an app feels slow and clunky. Basically, your phone is set back to the absolute basics.
Everything is still useable if needed. BUT, you don’t really want to.
4 No notifications, no buzz, no information overload
Last but not least: there are no proper notifications in place. Nothing is appearing on your screen yelling at you to do something or grab your phone. If you try to unlock your phone you’re just seeing the time and a white background. There is no notification center, no distracting widgets, nothing that lures you into getting lost on your phone.
You can choose the amount of notifications you want to receive while setting up “Assistive Access”. I’d suggest to keep them to an absolute minimum, if not turning them off at all.
Setting Up Assistive Access on your iPhone
How to set this up? It’s quite easy to set up “Assistive Access” once you find it. To enable “Assistive Access go to Settings > Accessibility > Assistive Access.
I also attached this YouTube tutorial in case you should struggle with the set up.
Conclusion: turning your iPhone into a temporary dumb phone is the best approach to stay productive yet
Not Perfect, But Close: Using “Assistive Access” to turn your smartphone into a dumb phone is still far from perfect. There are bugs, and it is as a relatively new feature not perfectly thought and tested through yet. Especially since it's not built for productivity, but for older people to understand their phone.
Even though, it’s the best tool we have so far to balance the need to have your smartphone around while working with the desire for a more productive and focused work day. This may represent a significant step toward managing our digital distractions and reclaiming our time.
I’m going to create a concept for an iOS focus mode 2.0 based on the “Assistive Access” feature, hoping that Apple does see this. If you want to contribute or discuss this with me, feel free to connect on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Have you tried “Assistive Access” to turn your iPhone into a temporary dumb phone yet? Are there other anti-distraction hacks that you’ve found effective or particularly useful? Would love to hear from you! ✺ ✴︎
Sign-Up here to get the news when my seconds article about this topic drops — as I will give you a summary on my learning after using this feature for 6+ months.☺︎☺︎☺︎
