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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Google has packed its flagship Pixel phones with a long list of useful features for everything from privacy to productivity, and rolls out more with its frequent Pixel Drop updates. It can be hard to keep up with all that's available—plus, many of the best features are disabled by default. If you have one of Google's smartphones, here are 10 ways to maximize everything your Pixel has to offer. Use App Pinning to keep people fro...

Daniel Oropeza Daniel Oropeza Shopping Editor Experience Daniel is Lifehacker's Shopping Editor covering tech deals and reviewing TVs, headphones, speakers, and projectors. He earned his master’s in journalism from Columbia University and has reported for the Miami Herald. He lives in Atlanta. Read Full Bio ...

I've written before about various software tricks to nudge a smartphone toward dumb-phone territory: stripping the home screen down to essentials, enabling greyscale mode, scheduling downtime windows. I tried all of it, and for a time it worked for me, but only in the way that hiding a bag of chips in a high cabinet works—technically an obstacle, but not really a barrier. One tap to "Ignore Limit," and I'm back to scrolling. The problem is that the key to unlock everything is right there in your pocket. Turns out I needed a small device called Brick to physically restrain me create a physical barrier, and I can feel my screen time habits finally change for the better. How Brick works with your smartphoneBrick is a small NFC fob—roughly the size of an AirPods case—paired with an app. You ...