I’ve gone nearly a year without using a web browser on my phone. I minimise the number of apps that are used for websites (e.g. I don’t use the Reddit or Facebook apps but heavily rely on the Google Maps app).
This habit makes me more attached to my laptop (and I feel more helpless without it) which seems mixed. I’ve only rarely needed to re-enable the app and occasionally ask other people to do something for me (e.g. restaurants that only have a web based menu or ordering system)
My Android phone has Chrome installed as a system app so can only be disabled in the settings and not uninstalled.
Using an adblocker to block distracting or unnecessary elements of web pages
On the uBlock Origin extension (Chrome | Firefox) one can right click to “Block element” and pick an element of a webpage to hide. I find this useful for removing distractions or ugly elements (but I don’t think speeds up page loading at all)
Some examples
- the Facebook news feed (for which dedicated addons also exist) as well as the footers and left and right sidebars - the YouTube comments, suggested video sidebar, search bar, footer - the footer on Amazon
I’ve listened to audibooks and pocasts at >1x speed for a while and began applying this to any video (TV or film) I watch too.
For the past few months I’ve been watching film and TV at 1.5x to 2.5x speed quite comfortably. I made the mistake of starting a rewatch of Breaking Bad, but powered through at 3x speed without much loss of moment-to-moment enjoyment. At faster speeds I find it very hard to follow without using subtitles.
I recommend Video Speed Controller (free & open source extension for Chrome & Firefox) for any online videos and most local video players (e.g. VLC) have speed controls built in.
Using DuckDuckGo as my address bar search.. … but rarely actually searching DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo allows for ‘bangs’ in the search.
For example “London !gmaps” redirects your search to Google Maps. At least half of my searches involve ”!g” to search Google since the DuckDuckGo search isn’t very good.
The wildcard ”!” takes you to the first result on DuckDuckGo’s search. For example, “Interstellar !imdb” is slower than “Interstellar imdb !” since the latter takes you to the first page of the DuckDuckGo search whereas the former takes you to the IMDb search results page.
When using DuckDuckGo with Bangs, I highly recommend the extension “DuckDuckGo !bangs but Faster” (Chrome, Firefox) which processes the bangs client side.
There is a LessWrong bang (!lw) and an EA Forum bang (!eaf) - both are currently broken but I’ve submitted requests to fix.
A thread for miscellaneous things I find useful
Not using a web browser on my phone
I’ve gone nearly a year without using a web browser on my phone. I minimise the number of apps that are used for websites (e.g. I don’t use the Reddit or Facebook apps but heavily rely on the Google Maps app).
This habit makes me more attached to my laptop (and I feel more helpless without it) which seems mixed. I’ve only rarely needed to re-enable the app and occasionally ask other people to do something for me (e.g. restaurants that only have a web based menu or ordering system)
My Android phone has Chrome installed as a system app so can only be disabled in the settings and not uninstalled.
Using an adblocker to block distracting or unnecessary elements of web pages
On the uBlock Origin extension (Chrome | Firefox) one can right click to “Block element” and pick an element of a webpage to hide. I find this useful for removing distractions or ugly elements (but I don’t think speeds up page loading at all)
Some examples
- the Facebook news feed (for which dedicated addons also exist) as well as the footers and left and right sidebars
- the YouTube comments, suggested video sidebar, search bar, footer
- the footer on Amazon
Watching videos at >1x speed
I’ve listened to audibooks and pocasts at >1x speed for a while and began applying this to any video (TV or film) I watch too.
For the past few months I’ve been watching film and TV at 1.5x to 2.5x speed quite comfortably. I made the mistake of starting a rewatch of Breaking Bad, but powered through at 3x speed without much loss of moment-to-moment enjoyment. At faster speeds I find it very hard to follow without using subtitles.
I recommend Video Speed Controller (free & open source extension for Chrome & Firefox) for any online videos and most local video players (e.g. VLC) have speed controls built in.
Using DuckDuckGo as my address bar search..
… but rarely actually searching DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo allows for ‘bangs’ in the search.
For example “London !gmaps” redirects your search to Google Maps. At least half of my searches involve ”!g” to search Google since the DuckDuckGo search isn’t very good.
The wildcard ”!” takes you to the first result on DuckDuckGo’s search. For example, “Interstellar !imdb” is slower than “Interstellar imdb !” since the latter takes you to the first page of the DuckDuckGo search whereas the former takes you to the IMDb search results page.
When using DuckDuckGo with Bangs, I highly recommend the extension “DuckDuckGo !bangs but Faster” (Chrome, Firefox) which processes the bangs client side.
There is a LessWrong bang (!lw) and an EA Forum bang (!eaf) - both are currently broken but I’ve submitted requests to fix.