from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is is possible to cut down on OCD phone use?

by thecarokann on 7/10/23, 4:29 PM with 2 comments

I suffer from OCD and, after using my iPhone, will end up going through a time-consuming process of opening up every app and clearing all notifications, saved history as well as deleting old emails, chats, messages etc.

With 60 apps this will take me about 10 minutes (and I will end up doing this ~15 times per day).

Is it possible to automate this process in some way?

To give you an example of what I end up doing with Twitter: open app > check DMs > delete > open notifications > clear > open settings > clear media and web storage. And I do something similar with Gmail/MS Teams/WhatsApp/Apple Podcasts…

I realise this is deeply unusual but was wondering if there might just be a technological fix.

  • by genmud on 7/10/23, 6:06 PM

    I made the decision a few years back to not allow notifications on my phone and it has improved my quality of life quite a bit.

    There are simply too many things in my life that need doing that having one more thing competing for attention just isn't worth it.

  • by disadvantage on 7/10/23, 5:34 PM

    > Is it possible to automate this process in some way?

    You can disable notifications for everything and also the red dot 'notification badges'