Things to Do on Your Phone When You’re Bored

Most “bored” lists are written for a desktop and quietly assume you have a mouse. On a phone, a good third of them fall apart — the interaction depends on a cursor, or the layout needs a wide screen, or the whole thing is built around hovering.

So this list has one rule: it has to work with a thumb. No cursor, no keyboard, no hovering, no pinching to read the text.

Works properly on touch

• Patatap — on a phone the letter keys become tappable pads. It is arguably better this way. Turn the sound on for this one; it is the entire point.
• Window Swap — full-screen video of someone else’s window. Vertical screen, no interaction needed beyond “next”.
• Neal.fun — most of these are built scroll-first, which suits a phone better than a desktop. The deep sea one especially.

Tap-and-think games

• Little Alchemy 2 and Infinite Craft — both are drag-two-things-together, which is a touch interaction first and a mouse one second. Both in the browser games collection.
• Lichess — the best chess on a phone, free, no account needed, no ads.
• Universal Paperclips — almost entirely buttons. Warning: it does not end quickly.

Things to listen to rather than look at

Good for a commute or a walk. Radio Garden spins a globe and plays whatever local radio is on there right now — the map is touch-native. The ambient sound mixers in the time wasters collection are sliders, which work fine with a thumb.

Our own stuff is built phone-first

Worth saying plainly because it is the honest advantage here: the quizzes and calculators on this site are designed for a 375px screen before a desktop one. Big tap targets, one column, results you can screenshot without cropping.

The doomscroller quiz is a reasonable place to start if you are reading this at a bus stop.

Skip these until you are at a desk

Not broken — just built around a cursor:

• Pointer Pointer — the entire joke is that it finds your mouse cursor. There is no cursor on a phone.
• Kern Type — needs pixel-level dragging. Frustrating on touch.
• Line Rider — drawing a smooth track with a fingertip is a different and much worse game.
• Townscaper — playable, but the camera controls want a mouse.

Keep going

At a desk instead? The work version assumes a keyboard and a need for silence. Late at night, the night version avoids anything with an endless feed. The main list is sorted by how long you have, and this one picks for you.