Does your phone need an Apps Audit?

Smart phones are, as their name implies, very smart. Possibly too smart.

People used to laugh at those of us who had handbags full of stuff. Pens, penknives, tissues, hand sanitiser, notebooks, shoelaces etc. etc. Now I find that my phone has started to amass similarly strange and only possibly useful stuff.

If you find that your phone is chomping through you mobile data, or is running out of storage, then an APP Audit is probably called for.

So what do you have, and what do you need?

If you are like me you tend to shy away from deleting any of the default apps, just in case they are in some way important to the phones operations. But as long as they are just apps, you can move them into folders, or delete them if you don't have the need or desire to use them.

Setting up your home screen can really help with app navigation. Most phones have a range of set ups available. If it's on your home screen and you have not accessed it in over 6 months then now may be the time to move it to the back of the phone closet.

Be aware of the storage requirements of the different apps. These may limit your capacity to take photos, film or recordings. This may be a good time to transfer these personal memories to you computer, or another storage device. Losing a phone is one thing, losing the memories contained inside, is another.

One of my biggest issues with my social media apps was that they were eating up my limited mobile data, as soon as I turned it on. As I was looking at my phone while writing this I found a network access setting on my phone which allows me to ban an app from using mobile data, only allowing updates when connected via wifi. Perfect!

Smart phones appear to be here to stay, so let us be smart too and learn more about them, and make sure they are working for us, not against us!

My suggestions is that you use #phonefreeday on the March 19th to audit your phone.