The grid is a snug place to dwell.
The app grid, I imply: the rows and rows of app icons in your iPhone’s homescreen. It’s acquainted. Protected. It’s how I’ve lived with my varied telephones over the previous decade. However sooner or later, it began to really feel oppressive.
All these icons gazing me within the face, vying for my consideration. The muddle! The distracting little notification badges! The grid was an affordable technique to set up apps after I had like, ten of them. There are sixty on the iPhone I’m utilizing now, and I set it up from scratch just a few months in the past.
Naturally, dwelling off-grid or in a non-traditional homescreen association has been potential for for much longer on Android. Google’s OS enables you to hold your display screen clear and simply discover your apps within the app drawer, which is all the time a swipe away. You’ll be able to even change the launcher totally. However iOS — the place each new app you obtain winds up in your homescreen by default — hasn’t precisely made it straightforward to desert the grid.
That began to vary when iOS 14 added widgets, an app library, and the power to cover apps out of your homescreen — although I haven’t developed the muscle reminiscence to make use of it a lot. Now, iOS 18 provides much more flexibility. You’ll be able to put apps and widgets wherever you need in your homescreen, change their colours, and put extra features into the Management Heart. However even because the apps and customization choices have multiplied, most of us are nonetheless utilizing our homescreens in mainly the identical method as we did with our first smartphones.
With the brand new choices in iOS 18 — and getting a peek at different peoples’ well-curated homescreens — I made a decision it was time to perform a little cleanup. Why ought to an app I solely open as soon as a month after I park downtown take up house on my homescreen year-round? Higher but, does any app need to occupy that valuable actual property?
I spent about an hour deleting icons, arranging widgets, and including controls to create my new homescreen. The digital camera management button on the iPhone 16 renders that icon pointless; the motion button launches the oft-used daycare app, so that might go too. Once I was accomplished, my haphazardly maintained system of folders with cute emoji labels was whittled down to simply 4 apps within the dock and a handful of widgets unfold throughout two pages, which I’m affectionately calling “Home windows Cellphone 2.0.”
Was it scary? A bit of. However you already know what? I don’t miss these rows of icons in any respect. 9 out of ten instances the app I’m in search of is within the Siri recommended apps that pop up after I open search. If not, I sort within the first few letters of the app identify and there it’s. You possibly can swipe over to the app library, I suppose, however I infrequently do.
The largest disadvantage is that I’ll see a notification, dismiss it, after which overlook about it for days because the app icon and its little crimson notification badge aren’t in my face anymore. However I missed issues right here and there even after I was dwelling on the grid, and people badges are an actual downside for me: I’m the form of one who wants to achieve badge zero, so I’ll always open apps simply to filter the notifications and get the crimson dot out of my face. Dwelling off the app grid removes this distraction, and it’s the primary factor I respect about my new life-style.
I’m pleased with my new homescreen, however a few of my colleagues take the off-the-grid philosophy to the subsequent stage. Weekend information editor Wes Davis might educate a masterclass in practical iOS homescreens. He retains just a few apps within the dock, and Wordle will get a spot on his grid, however outdoors of that it’s simply widgets and shortcuts.
“I hate in search of issues on my telephone,” he informed me. “All of this type of began with me leaping on the bandwagon of ‘I wish to use my telephone much less, and have or not it’s much less distracting.” The grayscale shortcut icons on his homescreen minimize down on visible muddle, and he doesn’t really feel as drawn to opening time-suck apps like TikTok when the icon isn’t proper in entrance of him. Lots of the shortcuts additionally comprise drop-down menus, so he can launch proper into the duty he’s in search of.
Better of all, this methodology permits him to arrange his telephone by the motion he’s making an attempt to take. An icon labeled “Podcasts” launches no matter podcast app he’s utilizing in the intervening time. If he ever begins utilizing a unique app, he’ll hold the identical shortcut icon and have it launch a brand new app. “I don’t must put a brand new app in there and get myself used to in search of that icon.”
“I attempt to hold it to simply these seven apps.”
Information editor Jay Peters takes a extra easy method. Like me, he finds the fixed presence of app icons distracting. “If I don’t see the app proper on my homescreen I’m method much less doubtless to make use of it and simply scroll with it.” He has a complete of seven apps on his homescreen — together with three within the dock — and can sometimes enable an app icon again onto the grid if he’s going to be utilizing it quite a bit in a brief time period. “If I’m happening a giant street journey or one thing, perhaps I’ll transfer the maps app [at the top of the homescreen],” he says, “However in any other case I attempt to hold it to simply these seven apps.”
Each of my colleagues have achieved a stage of stability of their digital lives that I love. I additionally heard from many extra who stated that they nonetheless preserve a homescreen stuffed with app icons, however they virtually all the time skip the grid and go to Highlight search when they should open an app. And none of us is aware of fairly when it occurred, however multiple particular person I talked to agreed that the Siri recommended apps on the high of the search pane acquired actually good sooner or later up to now. As a rule, the app I’m in search of is true there earlier than I even sort a letter into the search bar.
You don’t have to attend for AI or the metaverse or no matter to make your digital life much less annoying
That form of factor provides me hope for a future the place personalised AI will help me discover what I’m in search of on my telephone, with much less enter from me. But when I’ve discovered something from this train, it’s that you just don’t have to attend for AI or the metaverse or ambient computing or no matter to make your digital life much less annoying. There are instruments in our fingers already; you simply want slightly braveness to go away your consolation zone behind.
