# Custom iPhone Widget to Encourage Less Wrong Use

**TLDR**: I made a little custom iPhone widget for the EA Forum recently and have been getting a lot of value out of it. It takes an extra 10s to make this a LessWrong or Alignment forum widget. At the moment I don't feel bothered to make this into an app which is easy to install, but **I think people could set it up themselves in ~5 mins or less, and if you don't use the forum much but want to use it more it might help.**

### **What is it?**

I set up a EA Forum[^6vwbbw9s4i9] widget using a little iPhone personalisation tool called Scriptable. It shows the details of a random front page forum post once per hour. And it looks like this...

![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/JrNaRdeD9Kb-vprVvZ4QVKZ0NfXrZ2W0RfwxwNwI9dzvI7c3vR5OJ2yiIYTBOJbd3KYr_bO0EJHYLOrULCvrlD1fSLLHjjjpzODbaky7WgekErnyLUqZtZW_SnIAgLB6uk4cJMN1pQ8DFLq2bw)

At the time of writing I haven't read Ozymandias' post

### **Why I think it's good**

I've noticed that when I interact with the forum I usually enjoy it. However, I usually don't reach for the forum over other easily available sources of entertainment like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok (although don't worry, I deleted TikTok). I made this widget initially to try and make the Forum an easy reach alternative to these apps. I think it worked; **my usage of the forum went from once per month (or less) to once or twice a day.** At one point I removed the widget and didn't get around to re-adding it for a few months, and my forum usage dropped down again. Since reinstalling it a few days ago, it has jumped back up. I’d put this then at somewhere around a 10 - 100x increase in value out of the forum for me, but don’t know yet if it will work long term or just hold my attention for 1-2 week chunks.

### **How to set it up**

This works for iPhone and presumably iPad (although I haven't been able to test it on iPad).

*   Download the [Scriptable app](https://scriptable.app/) then open it
*   Click the little plus icon in the top right corner

![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/5BzYxSkMeVwxDdH5333EpfWZfjNJzNGIUtWfkYcDiDUr1LLFQYlI6B_m9cJUdsuXgO5ODOVy5dlsikjbnmmN1M6zjHzawciofXKVI1e4LeMHU5Sm_Y8m4zxZ8jwZst3tHo_ZQmL4CCA_erxRqg)

*   Paste [this code](https://github.com/williampayne23/Scriptable-Widgets/blob/master/EA%20Forum%20Widget.js)[^i7ry3wxn1y] into the editor
*   *For LessWrong replace getForumPosts(EAForum) with getForumPosts(LessWrong) on line 10.*
*   Go to your home screen
*   Long press on the home screen or any app to enter jiggle mode
*   Click the plus in the top left to add a widget
*   Find Scriptable (You can use the search bar)
*   Pick the midsized view and click "Add widget" at the bottom
*   Tap on the widget
*   Click choose script
*   Pick the script you just made (If you didn't actively change the name it should be the only option called "Untitled Script")
*   Tap anywhere else on the screen to exit jiggle mode.

You're done! I just ran through this process and it took a little over 1 minute. Here's [a video.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zVDnShDDk8WQ8q4tmGe8Xc57XAbj5VvW/view?usp=sharing)

I hope this helps you as much as it's helped me.

[^6vwbbw9s4i9]: Since the EA Forum, LessWrong and the Alignment Forum all use the same code you can replace getForumPosts(EAForum) with getForumPosts(LessWrong) or getForumPosts(AlignmentForum). 

[^i7ry3wxn1y]: For what it's worth, I don't advocate copying random code you see on the Internet and running it, but we're all friends here. (Plus I trust the community to have someone who feels like reading through the above and checking it's not horrifically unsafe and confirming in the comments.)