Is your phone gross? Watch this.

You're a mess. You carry the past with you everywhere you go

We've got to do something about it. This is All Things Mobile, and here's how to clean up your tech

Let's start with a universal thing, your phone. This thing goes with you everywhere

When you're on your couch, it's there. When you're in bed, it's there. And when you're on the toilet, it's probably there too

You ever stop to think about what kind of stuff is physically on your phone? Let's all think about it together, shall we

Ew. Okay, so let's get to cleaning. You want to use bleach. lots and lots of bleach, or burn it with fire. These are not good cleaning methods as they will

result in the destruction of your phone. Bleach will remove coatings from your phone, which is

what we call no good. To remove physical schmutz, you can use a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe or a 75

ethyl alcohol wipe or Clorox disinfectant wipes. No, Clorox is not a sponsor, but Apple specifically

calls out Clorox disinfectant wipes as safe for its products. Since those wipes are bleach-free

they should be okay for a lot of phones. Get to wiping

Be gentle and wipe just the hard non-porous surfaces. Do not get the liquid in the openings

Do you want to scrub and put an elbow grease into this? No, no

Gentle, like a breeze that caresses a leaf into fluttering softly Gentle If you have a foldable phone do not wipe the inner screen with anything other than a soft microfiber cloth If you must use a liquid get distilled water and gently wipe the grime away

Gentle, like the opposite of a bear catching a salmon upstream. You ever see videos of that? It's insane

Alternatively, you can use UVC light to disinfect your devices. Should you use a UVC wand like this one? Nope

The FDA issued a warning against using certain wands, which can give off unsafe levels of radiation

It could also cause injuries to the eyes or skin of people nearby

However, it is safe to use enclosed UVC boxes like phone soap

Just make sure your device or devices fit in it. To clean grills or ports, you may be tempted to grab a can of compressed air to blow everything away

Do not use compressed air on your phone. The force can be great enough to damage internal components like microphones

Instead, use a wooden or plastic toothpick to pull lint or whatever out

If you must use air, use a rubber air blower. You should not be able to produce enough force

to damage anything. Please do not take this as a challenge though. If you've got a brush, give that a go too

The outside of your phone is clean, but how about the inside? How many apps are on your phone right now

What's that you don't know? Well let find out Oh and when you do let us know how many apps you started with and ended with in the comments If you are on Android keep listening If you on iOS you can skip ahead or see how the other half lives

You do you. On Android, head to Google Play, tap your profile icon

then tap manage apps and device. And finally, tap the manage tab

On my personal phone, I have 401 apps. Do I use 401 apps daily

Of course not. So which should I get rid of? Maybe the ones I use the least

To find that out, tap on the recently updated text. That opens a dialog box

Tap least used. Now I have a list of apps that I hardly ever use

Ah, the Alaska Hawaiian app. Will I ever get to fly to either of you

I don't know. But I'll keep your app with me so I can remember you and this dream

Or I can just get rid of it and free up around 191 megabytes. If you want to free up space, tap that same menu on the top right and sort by size

If you've got automatic downloads on your music app or YouTube, you may see a lot of gigabytes taken up

What about iOS? To find out how many apps you have installed

go to settings, then tap general, then iPhone storage. The apps are sorted by size so you can see what's eating up the most space

You can also change the view to last use date If you see an app you never used maybe it time to let it go It be hard but I believe in you And then there are your earbuds They go into your ears all the time

When was the last time you gave them a really good cleaning? Be honest with yourself. Your

earbud tips may not be made of the same material as the bud itself, so keep that in mind

If the earbud is hard plastic like an AirPod or Galaxy Bud, that disinfecting wipe should work

nicely. Do not use the wipe on mesh areas though. Should you use compressed air now? No, definitely

not. No. If you want to know why, you could bust up the internal components like the drivers or

shove earwax further into the bud. You can clean your buds with a toothpick, but I've got this

earbud specific cleaner. It was a freebie with the case I bought. You can really get some precision

cleaning done with this. While you're at it, let's clean out that earbud case too. Make sure those

contacts are clean so your buds can charge properly. I'm going to keep cleaning and then

wipe my mind of all the horrors we've seen today. I'm Iez Actar and I'll see you online. Here's some

other things that are gentle. Gentle like a librarian's whisper in a room of sleeping kittens

Or gentle like if a cloud got tired and wanted to rest on a mountain. Or gentle unlike a raccoon

tearing open a trash bag. Be gentle. The word no longer has meaning to me. Gentle. Gentle. Gentle