How to reduce screen time on iPhone: settings that work

Your iPhone already has most of the tools you need to use it less. They’re just set up to be easy to ignore. Here’s a setup that holds, in the order we’d do it.

1. Look at the real numbers

Open Settings › Screen Time › See All App & Website Activity. Switch between Day and Week. Note three things:

• The two or three apps with the most time.
• Pickups: how many times you pick up the phone.
• First used after pickup: the app you reach for on autopilot.

Those few apps are your whole project. You don’t need to fix the rest.

2. Set App Limits on the worst ones

Settings › Screen Time › App Limits › Add Limit. Pick the apps from step 1 and set a daily allowance a bit below your current average, not a fantasy number. You can lower it every week.

3. Schedule Downtime

Settings › Screen Time › Downtime. Pick an evening start time and a morning end. During Downtime, only apps you allow will open. Add Phone, Messages, Maps and anything you need to Always Allowed. This one setting does more for night scrolling than anything else.

4. Lock it with a passcode you don’t know

This is the step that makes the rest work. Limits come with an “Ignore Limit” button, and one tap is nothing. Turn on Lock Screen Time Settings and have a partner, friend or housemate type the passcode. Now more time means asking someone, which you’ll rarely bother to do.

5. Silence the feeds

Settings › Notifications. Go through social, video, shopping and news apps and turn off Allow Notifications. For the ones you can’t fully mute, use Scheduled Summary so they arrive together, once or twice a day.

6. Clean up your home screen

Move the apps from step 1 off your home screen: long-press, Remove App › Remove from Home Screen. They stay in the App Library. Put things you want to use more, like a book app or your notes, in their old spots.

7. Use Focus for work and sleep

Settings › Focus lets you choose which people and apps can reach you, and which home screen pages show. A Work Focus that hides social apps during the day, and a Sleep Focus that starts on its own at night, take the decision away from you twice a day.

8. Try grayscale

Settings › Accessibility › Display & Text Size › Color Filters › Grayscale. Feeds look a lot less tempting in gray. Set Accessibility Shortcut to Color Filters so a triple-click of the side button switches it on and off.

9. Earn the time you keep

Cutting screen time to zero isn’t the goal. Choosing it is. A good test: would you still open this app if it cost ten push-ups? That’s exactly how PushPact works. Keep your daily pact and your apps are open till midnight. Skip it, and every unlock is a set.

10. Check back in a week

Open your Screen Time report again after seven days. Look at the same three numbers. If one app crept back up, tighten its limit or lock it harder. If pickups dropped, you’re winning, even if total time moved less than you hoped.

Comparing apps to help? Here’s our honest look at the best app blockers for iPhone.