I did something radical last weekend. I sat down with my phone, went through every installed app, and deleted everything I hadn’t used in the past month. I went from 94 apps to 23. The phone feels like a different device.

This isn’t a new idea. Digital minimalism has been a thing for years. But there’s a difference between reading about it and actually doing it. The process itself was surprisingly revealing.

The audit process

I went screen by screen, app by app. For each one, I asked three questions:

1. When did I last open this?
2. Would I notice if it disappeared?
3. Is there a reason it needs to be on my phone rather than a bookmark in a browser?

Most apps failed all three tests. I had shopping apps I’d installed for a single purchase months ago. Social media apps I’d downloaded “just to check something” and never removed. Utility apps that duplicated features already built into the phone. Games I played once and forgot about.

The hardest ones to delete were the “just in case” apps — the ones I used maybe once every six months but kept installed because what if I need them? The answer, it turns out, is that I can reinstall them in 30 seconds if I ever do need them.

What I kept

Communication: Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, Signal. Four ways to reach people is already too many, but these each serve a distinct group of contacts.

Productivity: Calendar, Notes, a task manager, my banking app, my email client. These are daily-use tools that I’d be lost without.

Media: A podcast app, a music app, my RSS reader, and the camera. That’s the entertainment stack.

Navigation and transport: Maps and a ride-sharing app. Essentials for getting around.

Health: One fitness tracking app. Not three. Not five. One.

That’s it. Everything else either went into the browser (for things I access occasionally) or was deleted entirely.

What I noticed immediately

The first thing is speed. My phone is noticeably faster. Apps open quicker, switching between them is smoother, and the battery lasts longer. Background processes from apps I wasn’t even using were consuming resources I didn’t realise I was losing.

The second thing is the lack of notifications. Each app I deleted was one fewer source of buzzes, badges, and banners competing for my attention. The phone is quieter now, in a way that feels like relief rather than absence.

The third thing — and this is the surprising one — is that I pick up my phone less often. When there’s nothing to scroll through, nothing to check, no red notification badges demanding attention, the compulsive phone-checking behaviour fades. The phone becomes a tool I use when I need it rather than a habit I default to when I’m bored.

The apps that were hardest to delete

Social media was the expected challenge, and honestly, it wasn’t that hard. I’d already moved most social media consumption to scheduled browser sessions rather than app-based habits.

The harder ones were the information apps — news readers, weather apps (I had three), and reference apps that I kept because they felt useful even though I rarely opened them. There’s a psychological comfort in having information available, even if you never access it. Letting go of that required trusting that I could find the information when I actually needed it.

A month later

It’s been about four weeks since the purge. I’ve reinstalled exactly two apps — a parking payment app I needed for a specific situation and a QR code scanner for a work event. Everything else has stayed deleted.

My screen time is down about 40 minutes per day. That’s nearly five hours per week of attention I’ve reclaimed. I’m not doing anything heroic with that time — I’m reading more, sleeping a bit better, and having slightly longer conversations with people I live with. Small things. But five hours a week of small things adds up.

The experiment convinced me that most of us are carrying around devices that are actively working against our wellbeing. Not because phones are inherently bad, but because we’ve accumulated layers of attention-demanding software that serve the app developers’ interests far more than our own.

Delete the apps. Keep the phone. The difference is bigger than you’d expect.