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Posted by joshmanders 9/8/2025

iPhone dumbphone(stopa.io)
695 points | 396 commentspage 5
Reply2me 9/18/2025|
Have a s23 ultra, iPhone is for people who just follow others. To be honest, android has better specs anyways. Android team whos with me?
ausbah 9/8/2025||
somewhat simpler but paid (but pricey at $10 month) solution i’ll shill for is Opal. only app i’ve used that can actually lock app, set time limits, etc w a pretty great UI and config setup

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1497465230

xenator 9/8/2025|
Wow! It is crazy how much money people will to pay for such problems.

I restrict myself from distractions by disabling hosts via custom rules in my nextdns account. It is enough and free.

snide 9/8/2025||
For those that are looking for something more advanced in the Android space a friend of mine built https://limitphone.com/ to handle something like this. It requires a reset, but comes with a lot more options.
kwanbix 9/8/2025|
Looks very interesting. The price is not good. I mean, we have to do it for 4 fones, that is 120 dollars per year, which is a lot of money, not in it's own, but it ads up with other subscriptions. The trial is too short, i think a months will be better.
efreak 9/10/2025||
Requires more setup, but you can use ownDroid to do this manually. Though it can't filter apps it doesn't know about (no smart filters)

https://github.com/BinTianqi/OwnDroid

snaky2929 9/10/2025||
Here's what worked for me - after trying screen limits, nokia phones

1. Remove all social media apps from iPhone 2. Use Opal in deep focus mode to block apps and websites (I can't exit the deep focus mode - but I allow myself a 2 hour window when deepfocus isn't active) 3. Keep my phone inside my bag - out of sight out of mind 4. Remove "tap to wake up" in settings - you'll have to click the side button to see the screen 5. Deleted slack and email - was hesitant about missing important notifications, but decided to try for a week and realized it made no difference to my work

awaseem 9/8/2025||
Love this, I created Foqos which is FOSS (free & open source sw). The idea is to use physical switches like QR codes or NFC tags to block apps. Its free to try and just requires an install. Worth checking out if this doesn't work out for you.
stopachka 9/8/2025|
Just checked out Foqos -- have seen others mention it in the thread too. Great work!
awaseem 9/8/2025||
thank you! Repo here: https://github.com/awaseem/foqos
radeck 9/9/2025||
The built in iPhone time limits work well if you have a partner - simply have them set the password and keep it secret.

You want to spend more time scrolling on twitter?

Fine, muster up the courage to ask your wife for it while she preps school lunches for the kids.

bitwize 9/9/2025||
So "dumbphone" now means "runs only a preselected by me set of apps"? I thought it meant "phone with no app functionality whatsoever, only capable of voice, text, and other basic cell network services"?
highonl1fe 9/9/2025||
I'm on the exact same journey as OP but I think I have a solution that is a little easier to setup.

Simply use Apple's Screen Time but lock all of the Screen Time settings behind a pin. Have a friend or loved one create the pin and keep it secret from you and voila.

With Screen time you can have an "Always Allowed" list and if you use the "Downtime" setting it doesn't actually let you set limits past a one minute exception per app.

You also have to make sure that the downtime setting is 24 hours of downtime.

*Edit: seems like a lot of people are suggesting the same exact thing.

cwoolfe 9/8/2025||
Yeah! Tech Lockdown makes this easy. https://www.techlockdown.com/apple-config-generator
postexitus 9/8/2025|
Could this be used as an alternative to Parental Controls? Appple's implementation of parental controls is so deficient that it gives me PTSD every time I need to configure it.
stopachka 9/8/2025|
Author here: I think this could work great for parental controls. A really determined kid with a laptop or the willingness to factory reset their iphone could get around it. But outside of this I _think_ it's worth trying.
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