[playpause]

For the last 2 years I’ve been using an iPod touch as my “downtime” device. I usually put my iPhone away in a drawer from early evening until I’m ready to start work the next day. I found this impossible to stick to until I got an iPod touch, because in the evenings and mornings I often need to manage things like HomeKit devices or other Apple ecosystem things like Reminders. I don’t have any distracting or time-sucking apps on the iPod touch, and the screen is small and fiddly, so I barely use it except for a few seconds here and there for something practical. The difference in stress levels and mindset has been huge. I can’t recommend highly enough separating your phone usage into ‘social/work/news/comms’ and ‘practical/home/calm’ categories, on different physical devices.

I have tried using the new iOS Focus and Downtime features to make my iPhone work a similar way (hide all the time-sucking apps at certain times of day etc), but having a dedicated device for the purpose is much simpler and much more effective.

[brundolf]

I do something similar but not quite the same with my iPad: it has most of the same (non-work) apps that my phone does, but I've disabled all notifications for all apps so it never yells at me; it's an entirely chill-out/self-directed device where nothing ever grabs at my attention

[dwighttk]

I do something similar but with my main iPhone. There’s like 3 apps that have notifications and none of them make sound.

[brundolf]

I treat my main phone as a notification entrypoint; trash-notifications are turned off, of course, but every messaging, calling, email, etc app has them turned on. If I want to know if anything relevant to me has happened, I look there or keep it nearby. If I don't have a notification there, I know nothing has happened

On my iPad, even messages with friends, emails, etc are all blocked. Not even red badges on the app icons. Nothing that can possibly prompt or notify me in any way. I don't think I could get away with that on my main phone

[darknavi]

You can still do this buy just purchasing an older iPhone and never putting it on a cell plan right?

[tomchuk]

I have an older iPad mini for this purpose (but an old iPhone without a data plan would work too). I setup a separate home@<domain> iCloud account under my family plan and use it exclusively for streaming music vi AirPlay, cooking w/ recipes on Paprika, HomeKit controls, reminders, timers, etc. - no Slack notifications, no calls, no calendar reminders. The AppleTV goes on the same account too. It's really been a great solution.

[idonotknowwhy]

I've got an old LG V40 for this purpose. It's got music apps, meditation, and a few other non-social things. It's also my flashlight if I wake up in the night, and alarm clock to wake me in the morning.