Turning off sensors with shortcuts to get more privacy out of your iPhone
I recently realized that the cat and mouse game of privacy is hard to play on the iPhone because of the number of options you have to keep saying yes and no to.
So I decided to go with a different approach - enable and disable the sensors to improve privacy.
I started by manually disabling wifi, bluetooth, mobile data and location services when I didn't need them. But the iPhone is insiduous - even when you disable Wifi from the control center, it only disables it for the day and re-enables it again the next day. The other problem was that doing this manually was a pain.
So, I figured, why not try doing this with shortcuts? And I was surprised by how easy that was to setup.
I ended up creating 3 shortcuts:
- Driving mode shortcut - enables mobile data and bluetooth, and takes me to the screen to enable location services(since enabling it directly via shortcuts is not possible)
- Home mode shortcut - enables wifi only
- Stealth mode shortcut - disables all sensors and takes me to the screen to disable location services
And finally, I added the shortcuts to my control center.
The cool thing about disabling wifi etc. via shortcuts is that is a permanent disable that doesn't reset after a day.
I've been enjoying a major improvement in battery life since and my phone runs much cooler. The apps do complain now and then, but on the bright side, with all the sensors off, ads don't get served in apps as well, improving the experience considerably.
I do run a small risk of losing the phone in stealth mode which means that I won't be able to use the "Find My" services to locate the phone. Small price to pay in my opinion.
Googling around should get you everything you need to set this up, but if you want specific details or get stuck somewhere, don't hesitate to reach out to me.