The Great iPhone Purge Of 2013

Have you ever looked at your iPhone and been shocked by how many apps you have on that thing? I was sitting at 120 apps, yes you read that correctly, 120! Clearly I had a problem. I felt like I was bordering on becoming an app hoarder. So I decided to purge my iPhone of all the apps I wasn't using on a regular basis and man it felt good.

Here's a look at what my phone looked like when it was bloated with all 120 apps:

Here is what it looks like now:

I got rid of 61 apps! That means I have 59 left, which still feels like a lot but I'm feeling great about what I got rid of. If I could get rid of some of the built in Apple apps such as Stocks and Newsstand I'd be down to 53.  And when iOS 7 is released in the fall even more apps, such as Gmail, Viewfinder, Chrome, etc, will no longer be necessary due to the updates to their corresponding Apple apps. So my phone will be even lighter yet!

It felt good getting rid of all that excess weight and getting down to a much simpler set up. I will continue to shed weight here and there over the next couple of weeks. For example Evernote, which I used to love, is on it's way out. I'll explain why I'm getting rid of it on my mobile devices next week.

While I was in a slimming mood I went ahead and cleaned up my Twitter following list:

I stopped following 101 people on Twitter simply because it was getting to be way to much to wade through to find useful information.

I've been much happier with both my iPhone and Twitter user experience since I slimmed down. I even went ahead and did the same thing on my iPad yesterday. I wish I had done this a long time ago! I'm going to keep my devices and social medias light from here on out. New app additions will have to go through a much stiffer testing process to earn a spot on my devices.

Have any of you done major purges like this with your devices or social media? What was the experience like for you?