{"id":215691,"date":"2026-02-20T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/how-a-month-long-app-purge-finally-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T12:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T17:20:09","slug":"how-a-month-long-app-purge-finally-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/how-a-month-long-app-purge-finally-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"How a month-long app purge finally fixed my relationship with my phone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/app-purge-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/\">How a month-long app purge finally fixed my relationship with my phone<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/app-purge-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/\">https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/app-purge-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-20 12:15:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.androidpolice.com\">www.androidpolice.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Like most people, I hadn\u2019t noticed the app count on my phone creeping up. However, after years of downloading and trying new tools, I saw that my app drawer was bloated.<\/p>\n<p>I had pages of applications I did not remember installing, let alone using. So, I set myself a challenge: uninstall every app I had not opened in the past 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>Here is what happened when I pressed the <strong>Uninstall <\/strong>button for rarely used apps.<\/p>\n<p>                    <span data-field=\"label\" class=\"article-card-label\">Related<\/span><\/p>\n<h5 class=\"display-card-title \">\n<p>\t\t\tHow to download Android apps without the Google Play Store<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p class=\"display-card-excerpt\">Who needs Google Play when you have APKMirror?<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"auditing-what-i-actually-use\">\n                        Auditing what I actually use<br \/>\n               <\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"finding-the-culprits\">\n            Finding the culprits<br \/>\n    <\/h3>\n<p>                    <img width=\"480\" height=\"1040\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Screenshot showing App activity details on Android\" src=\"https:\/\/static0.anpoimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/app-audit-1.jpg?q=70&#038;fit=crop&#038;w=480&#038;dpr=1\" class=\"img-brightness-opt-out\"\/><img width=\"480\" height=\"1040\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Screenshot showing the sort feature under the Manage apps &#038; device page on the Google Play Store\" src=\"https:\/\/static0.anpoimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/app-audit-2.jpg?q=70&#038;fit=crop&#038;w=480&#038;dpr=1\" class=\"img-brightness-opt-out\"\/><\/p>\n<p>On Android, it\u2019s surprisingly easy to see how often you use apps. In <strong>Settings <\/strong><strong> Digital Wellbeing <\/strong><strong> Dashboard<\/strong>, I could see app activity for the last month.<\/p>\n<p>A few apps had hours of use, but plenty had <strong>0 minutes<\/strong>, which was all the permission I needed to delete them.<\/p>\n<p>I also went into <strong>Google Play Store <\/strong>and selected<strong> Manage apps &#038; device <\/strong><strong> Manage <\/strong><strong> Sort by:&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/app-purge-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How a month-long app purge finally fixed my relationship with my phone https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/app-purge-fixed-my-relationship-with-my-phone\/ Publish Date:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.anpoimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/a-hand-holding-a-smartphone-showing-a-list-of-apps-selected-for-deletion-with-a-sorting-menu-set-to-least-used-and-a-trash-bin-labeled-uninstall-apps-in-the-background.png?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-215691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215693,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215691\/revisions\/215693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}