Can You Live on Just WeChat and Mini Programs? If You'll Accept a Second-Rate Experience, You Can Last a Week | Hack Your Life

Part 3 of our National Day series on quitting digital services.

*Happy holidays!*Starting October 3, QDaily Labs will run five life experiments over the holiday, all on the theme of quitting. What we want to know is this: among the endless new internet services and technologies, which ones end up staying in daily life and becoming indispensable? Does having them raise the quality of life, or does it feed laziness and dependence?

Today we enter "a world with only WeChat."

WeChat is building a local network of its own, and it keeps growing.

Two years ago WeChat launched mini programs — apps and games you can open inside WeChat, which turned WeChat into something like an operating system. It now carries more than 1 million mini programs, and while they look nothing like the offline uses they were first pitched for, they cover the basics of everyday internet services: e-commerce, food delivery, ride-hailing.

My phone has 181 apps on it, sorted by color into 8 folders. In practice I open no more than 20 of them on any given day. And even the ones I use often, I don't put every feature to work.

The idea behind mini programs sounds exactly right — light, convenient, open when you need them, gone when you're done. No separate download, no storage eaten up. According to SensorTower, popular apps have grown 10 to 50 times in size since 2013.

Mini programs are a top strategic priority, and WeChat has been pushing their entry points higher up, above all by giving them more room in search results, so you find more of them.

Now that an all-encompassing "WeChat operating system" is taking shape: if WeChat were the only app on your phone, could it replace everything you do online?

A week ago I started this somewhat extreme experiment — keep only WeChat on my phone, and do anything else through mini programs.

Tencent's main rivals are Alibaba and Toutiao. I use neither Toutiao nor Douyin, so losing them was no problem. The only real worry was Taobao and Alipay; I figured the JD.com mini program and WeChat Pay could stand in.

In malls, supermarkets and corner shops you see WeChat and Alipay QR codes posted side by side everywhere. Cut off Alipay, and WeChat Pay still covers what I need to pay for.

With no further assumptions, I began. Things then went in some unexpected directions.

What follows is my diary.

Day One: I Turned Off Every App Notification, and Felt Fine

On the first day I did a little preparation, then went about a normal day.

I didn't delete every app; I turned off notification permission for all of them. Much of the time we don't open apps on purpose — notifications are the way in. iOS has no single switch to kill all notifications, so you go app by app, which took time and patience.

WeChat's notifications stayed on, of course.

Then I worked out how to launch mini programs more easily. Pull down on WeChat's main screen and the top row shows the ones you used recently; below that is a row you can pin, "My Mini Programs." To turn it on, open each mini program's home page and choose "Add to My Mini Programs."

That is the quickest way in. The only annoyance is that the same mini program often shows up in both of the top rows, which wastes a little space.

I searched for a few I expected to use a lot — the everyday, high-frequency needs. Dianping, Baidu Waimai, a few video sites, Gaotie Guanjia (a high-speed rail app), Mobike, Didi and WeCom. And QDaily Magazine, naturally.

Later, thinking about going outside, I added Tencent Maps. There was no choice: neither Amap nor Baidu Maps has a map mini program.

Nothing heavy came up that day, and I went nowhere unfamiliar. I ordered two meals through mini programs; otherwise it was business as usual.

The trouble came on the way home from work. Ever since the iPhone let me load a Beijing transit card into Wallet, I have never carried the physical card — you tap your phone at the gate. That was clearly out now.

The Yitongxing app takes both WeChat Pay and Alipay: you can scan a QR code to enter the station, or collect a ticket from a self-service machine. But it is an app, with no mini program to match.

So I walked back out of the subway and hailed a Didi Express car.

Didi's mini program is a stripped-down app. The basic ride-hailing functions and interactions are there, but there are no bikes, and no in-app messaging with the driver. I would normally send a line like "my location is accurate"; through the mini program all you can do is wait for the driver to phone you.

This was one of the few times I hailed a ride through the mini program. The driver didn't call, and I got in and out of the car as usual. But if you hail cars often — and Didi's mini program does not run smoothly — the experience would be bad.

Also, only afterwards did I find out that Beijing lets you enter the subway by scanning a WeChat QR code: you add a "Beijing Yikatong" card to WeChat's Card Wallet, and after that you just show the code each time.

The good part of that day was that the endless stream of push notifications stopped. Not one, except from WeChat. The world felt wonderfully quiet.

Day Two: Navigation Is Fine, but Some Trouble Starts to Show

Subway card and cash in hand, I set out that morning for an event venue.

Six kilometers, on foot, then subway, then a bike — a typical first-tier-city commute.

All of it could be done inside mini programs. Tencent Maps is not pleasant to use and the interface is ugly, but it told me which subway to take. On the train I also checked the day's weather; the Tencent Weather mini program handled that.

Then, in case Tencent Maps had the navigation wrong, I used the Dianping mini program to confirm the exact location and get a look at a real photo of the entrance.

There was a short stretch left after the subway, so I scanned a Mobike open. Usable bikes were a bit hard to find, but the mini program itself was no problem.

On bike-sharing: of the main brands on the market, only Mobike can be unlocked by scanning with WeChat. Ofo belongs to Alibaba's camp, and Bluegogo's mini program has been an empty shell for a long time.

The Tencent Maps mini program also does voice navigation. I usually cycle wearing AirPods and listen to the directions, and that need was met too.

By evening I had noticed little inconvenience — until a coworker asked me on WeChat for the Taobao link to something I had bought. I thought about it for a long time and really found no way around it. I could only apologize.

Several times that day I also wanted to open a music app and listen to something. I searched for QQ Music, Tencent Music, Kugou, Kuwo, NetEase Cloud Music and other keywords, and found no mini program that could stand in for a music service.

"Douban Musician" is a mini program much like the website: you can browse playlists and search. But it carries only the work of independent musicians.

I asked a coworker to share a few songs in a group chat. I could still AirPlay them to the speaker at home, but the sound coming out of WeChat was audibly compressed. A dismal thought arrived — was I going to listen to music like this all week?

I made one other change that day. To keep the experiment honest, I switched to a dedicated main phone with WeChat as its only app; everything else, native apps included, was deleted wherever the phone let me.

Day Three: I Hit the Limits of Getting Work Done and Reinstalled a Few Apps

My main work tools stay on my computer. On the phone I use team chat (Slack), email, notes and voice recording, and occasionally edit text in a browser.

On day one I had already set up Tencent Enterprise Email, which has a mini program. I could read mail on my phone easily enough, except there were no push notifications. There is a workaround: link your account through the Tencent Enterprise Email official account, and every incoming message triggers a notification in your feed.

But that mini program serves only Tencent Enterprise Email. Besides the company address I have two Gmail accounts, and there is no mini program for those either.

And the enterprise mail mini program supports exactly one account for sending and receiving — it cannot take in messages from several sources at once the way an app does.

So on email it was like Didi: an option that keeps the basic function and delivers a worse experience.

I ran a quick search on a few mainstream mail providers. Even QQ Mail has no mini program, never mind NetEase and the rest.

Luckily Tencent Enterprise Email is my most important inbox, so that problem was more or less solved. For everything else I could find no mini-program substitute at all.

Slack above all. I have it on both my phone and my computer. It is a foreign instant-messaging tool, so of course nobody built a mini program for it. I need to talk to teammates in real time and cannot sit in front of my computer all day, and over those three days I missed far too many messages.

Then recording, which I need for interviews; I normally use the iPhone's native Voice Memos. Notes and Calendar hold my daily movements and plans. I ran on memory for two days; on the third I could not hold out any longer.

There was nothing for it: those four apps came back onto my phone.

Day Four: A Day Off, and Mini Programs Take Away Basic Entertainment

Even with the necessary work apps back, plenty of my basic needs went unmet. The experiment was getting harder and harder to keep up.

Every mini program to do with content was painful to use.

I mentioned music earlier. I later found one called "Music Station," made by Tencent itself. It plays music, but it exists for "social" reasons: you can share playlists into a group chat, and see the music you and others have shared publicly in Moments. You still cannot search for an artist or a song title.

So on music I was cut off completely from the services I used to rely on. That week I would sometimes listen to Music Station's "songs shared in Moments" section. My friends' taste is not my taste, and the quality of the songs was all over the place.

Mini programs also copy only part of an app's functions, and plenty of them still try to steer you toward the full app.

WeChat Read, for one. Its mini program is only a storefront: browse the titles, read a short free sample, and if you want to go further it tells you, "Please download the WeChat Read app to keep reading."

Video is the same. Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video all have mini programs. Tencent Video's is the more complete of the three — you can even pick the playback resolution. Youku's and iQiyi's cannot; on an iPhone X they default to 360p.

I usually cast video from my phone to the TV. Mini programs offer no way to do that at all.

Or Douban: the mini program will show you a film's rating, but it cannot play the trailer.

More important is searching for news. The only search left is the box at the top of WeChat, a search engine for a closed network. Searching chat history, Moments or saved articles works fine.

Outside WeChat, though, it runs on Sogou Search, a service even harder to bear than Baidu. I tried searching a story trending that day — McDonald's toy tie-in with Nintendo — and the top results were news from 2005.

More important still, using a mini program covers up the WeChat you were already in, so you miss messages. And to get back to the conversation, your only option is to close the mini program.

Too much trouble. I began to want my old phone back.

Day Five: Out of Town, Where Gaotie Guanjia Mostly Stands In for the App

On day five I had a high-speed train to catch. I had bought the ticket through Gaotie Guanjia two weeks earlier, so all that was left was checking the route.

Gaotie Guanjia has two mini programs. One searches and books tickets — you can even order food through it. The other shows your own itinerary.

Between them they covered what I needed for the trip. There were two small inconveniences. First, the mini programs push no notifications. The regular Gaotie Guanjia app tells you to leave the house in time, tells you when boarding has begun, and so on.

Second, if you want to change or refund a ticket, the mini program tells you to use the app; it cannot help you itself. You rebook inside the app, or queue at the ticket window.

Luckily I was not late and did not need to rebook, and listening closely to the station announcements kept me from missing my train.

Day Six: Shopping Mini Programs Are the Most Complete, but WeChat Pay Is the Only Way to Pay

On day six I concentrated on e-commerce.

I placed two orders on JD.com. The customer-service system was a headache. I asked about the details of a product and the agent showed as busy. I closed the mini program, and when I came back I could not find our conversation anywhere. I still don't know whether anyone replied.

Having weighed it up myself, I filled in the address and paid. This is where you see the biggest difference in mini programs: the only payment option is WeChat Pay. JD.com's own app offers WeChat, JD Pay, bank cards and more, and both JD Pay and Alipay let you pay in installments.

Inside the mini-program system there is no other choice. The same goes for the mini programs of mainstream e-commerce platforms like Pinduoduo and Jumei.

Once the payment goes through, a notification lands in your WeChat feed, and more follow when the seller ships the item and when the parcel is out for delivery.

WeChat is also polishing the shopping experience. Below the mini-program search box sits a "My Shopping List" entry, which records everything you have added to a cart in any shopping mini program, uniting carts that used to be separate.

That may make online shopping the most complete service on mini programs — better, arguably, than the native apps. The catch is that every financial option other than WeChat Pay is blocked.

Day Seven: WeChat Has Remade My Habits

This may be the hardest part to notice. Once every app and service that carries content and information runs through WeChat, something in my head may already have changed.

On the last day I saw a piece of news in Moments: Instagram had broken, and users in parts of the world could not get in. Only then did I realize I had not opened Instagram once in a whole week.

That week there was no Weibo, no Douban communities, no way around the firewall and therefore no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. On my phone my only sources of information were the Tencent News and QDaily mini programs and Moments — and Moments was, in fact, the main channel.

It also meant I was wrapped completely inside a filter bubble built by Tencent — the idea that a person chooses only the information he already agrees with or is interested in, and over time ends up sealed inside a huge bubble.

Because of my job I still read more news on my computer every day. But what if I depended on my phone alone for information?

A week later I switched back to the phone with 181 apps on it, 70 of them waiting to be updated. The information anxiety is still there, and I still have to do something about my screen time, but those 181 apps, all chosen by me, gave me back a little sense of security.

Mini Programs Can Handle the Basics, but You Have to Accept a Worse Experience

Can mini programs replace apps?

The answer is still not encouraging. If anything, what mini programs can do today, and how they feel to use, is very limited.

They meet some everyday needs and get you out of a hole when you can't download and use the app. Dianping, Didi, the various food-delivery services, ticketing, and so on.

But on usability, mini programs cannot be leaned on for frequent, long-term use; they don't wear well. Mobike may be the one case where the mini program is easier to use than the original app — we all have WeChat anyway, and you just open Scan.

More often you have to put up with a sluggish experience and missing functions and interactions. Didi is the textbook case.

For work tools, expect no real help from mini programs. The small-utility ones mostly serve WeChat's social side: a calculator, an invoice assistant, a business-card assistant are handy enough, but for anything you use harder, such as notes or email, stick to the original app. That is ground mini programs cannot cover.

Then financial services. Mini programs filter out every transaction-related situation and leave WeChat Pay as the only option. Even if you hold no wealth-management products this reaches your daily life: WeChat does not support paying in installments, so JD Baitiao is out. Or take paying off a credit card — by default WeChat gives each user only 5,000 yuan of free repayment, and above that you pay a service fee.

This is also the biggest obstacle mini programs face: an app ecosystem cast inside one giant Tencent net, where the service and support behind every app runs through WeChat, and the user's only choice is WeChat.

One thing is certain: if WeChat is all that's left in your life, life will not be as convenient as you imagine.

Finally, if you want to explore a few mini programs that are actually worth a look, we ran a review a while back, for your reference.

Cover image from Giphy