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Apr 21, 2022
With total of 63 applications(to be exact) installed on my phone, surprisingly I happen to use just few of them. The rest, they are just staying there on 'Put to Sleep'. Sure, there are useful and "never-used"ful apps. When I keep track of My daily phone usage it happens to cross 6 hours at minimum and it keeps increasing. I'll spare you the every activity I do on phone and directly come to the point...which is writing about which app do I visit the most often and why do I do so?
(hopefully this kinda helps myself figure out why can't I lower my screen timing)
On first I got Instagram. Ever since I deleted my Facebook account, Instagram has always been my go-to app to look for daily updates and to connect with my friends. Well I do have Matrix and signal for connecting online but most of my friends don't use or have no idea about OpenSource and decentralised communication. To be honest, I am also pretty much a newbie around FOSS environment, so I haven't been much active in convincing my friends to use them.
On second, we got TikTok. Yep, I chose to start with ridiculous apps first, just bear with it. So talking about TikTok, it has been my day-killing app to use. When I have no works to do or I have works but I don't want to do I just open it and see random 15 seconds videos or maybe 3 minutes long videos and kill my time. I gotta admit that whatever the algorithm it's using there for my "For You"page, it hasn't been quite a for me page, just airy fairy bullshits. This is good because it has really been pushing me to just go and delete my tiktok account.
Coming to the third we got YouTube or shall I say YouTube Vanced. Using Vanced for a long time has really made me forget that "full of ads tracking my interest down" Youtube. Sadly, just a month or two ago, Google ceased and desisted Vanced we are left with no other option than going back to Youtube. Lucky us, there are already other projects under construction like ReVanced and Vuetube that are continuing the legacy of Vanced. And, I don't think I really need to put a reason on why I use YouTube frequently because who doesn't? It has got everything, every answers, not just in text but whole explanation and visualization.
Then comes Reddit. Honestly speaking, it's my second time coming back to it and ain't no going back now. The first time I got into reddit world, I felt it boring. There were not much sub-reddits I had followed and for those I had followed it showed all shitpostings, even r/meme hadn't got that funny posts then. But after researching about the app more and getting some guidance on numerous sub-reddits, I got to know more about other popular sub-reddits and afterthat reddit has been nothing but fun and only fun. I typically like the feature of anonymous interaction with people around the world. It has really been learn and fun with reddit now.
Being one of those who never gets tired of binge watching, be it movie, sequels or series, Cloudstream tops the list of my frequently used apps. It's open source and easy and minimal and gives you the Netflix vibe without even having to pay Netflix for an account. Talking about it more, you get to choose the source from which you want to watch your movie rather than having to rely on one source. Trust me when I say my list of "Recently Watched" is rapidly increasing after I got introduced to this app, which aswell was recommended by a friend of mine!
Of course there are still other apps that I use daily, but this will go lengthy if I start talking about them individually. There is matrix, duolingo (which I have been quite enjoying recently learning Spanish), Lagrange, Firefox...and many more. Truly, there has been no problem spending a day in one corner of my room without getting bored and credits to all these applications, plus some books that I'm reading to build a habit of reading.