Then, you need to add the dark Dumb Phone wallpaper (Wallpaper in Settings), switch to dark mode (Display and Light in Settings), and turn off home screen animations: From Settings select Accessibility > Per-App Settings > Add App > Home Screen and App Librarythen tap the Home Screen and App Library and Reduce Movementand set it to On.
With all of that, you need to hide other home screen app shortcuts, which you can do by long-pressing them, then selecting Remove the App and Remove from Home Screen. You should leave just your Dumb Phone widget and nothing else on a home screen—though all your apps are still available if you swipe left to get to the App Library.
Tap on any app listed in the Dumb Phone widget itself, and it opens as normal. You can also add a Dumb Phone shortcut to your minimal home screen and customize its appearance by App icon entry on the settings page for Dumb Phone. (Tap the gear icon, top left, to get to settings.)
Other settings in the Dumb Phone app let you customize which apps are available through the widget and change the appearance of the widget itself—including text alignment and the spacing between each shortcut. You can also change the default white-on-black look for black-on-white.
In addition, the app gives you the option to create separate profiles for your widgets—one for work and one for outside work, for example—that you can quickly switch between as needed. For the full dumb phone experience, you might also want to play around with some of the iOS notification settings.
Android
For Android users, the Minimalist Phone app is one of the best options available for this particular job. It costs $5 a month, even less if you pay for a year at a time, and you can get lifetime use of the app for $30. There’s also a seven-day free trial that lets you see if you find the app useful before paying.
Minimalist Phone is known as a launcher: a type of Android app that completely replaces most of the interface, including home screens and menus. It’s a full reskin of your phone, and one that goes deeper into the operating system than anything possible on iOS (but don’t worry, you can go back to normal whenever you want with just a few taps).
