An iPhone proprietor’s information to dwelling off the app grid

The grid is a snug place to stay.

The app grid, I imply: the rows and rows of app icons in your iPhone’s homescreen. It’s acquainted. Secure. 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 litter! The distracting little notification badges! The grid was an affordable solution to manage apps once I had like, ten of them. There are sixty on the iPhone I’m utilizing now, and I set it up from scratch a couple of months in the past. 

Naturally, dwelling off-grid or in a non-traditional homescreen association has been doable for for much longer on Android. Google’s OS allows you to preserve your display clear and simply discover your apps within the app drawer, which is all the time a swipe away. You may even exchange the launcher completely. 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 alter when iOS 14 added widgets, an app library, and the flexibility 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 may put apps and widgets anyplace you need in your homescreen, change their colours, and put extra capabilities into the Management Heart. However even because the apps and customization choices have multiplied, most of us are nonetheless utilizing our homescreens in principally the identical approach 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 once I park downtown take up area on my homescreen year-round? Higher but, does any app should occupy that treasured 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 completed, my haphazardly maintained system of folders with cute emoji labels was whittled down to only 4 apps within the dock and a handful of widgets unfold throughout two pages, which I’m affectionately calling “Home windows Telephone 2.0.”

Was it scary? A bit of. However you recognize what? I don’t miss these rows of icons in any respect. 9 out of ten instances the app I’m on the lookout for is within the Siri instructed apps that pop up once 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 assume, 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 purple notification badge aren’t in my face anymore. However I missed issues right here and there even once I was dwelling on the grid, and people badges are an actual drawback for me: I’m the form of one who wants to achieve badge zero, so I’ll always open apps simply to filter out the notifications and get the purple dot out of my face. Dwelling off the app grid removes this distraction, and it’s the primary factor I recognize 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 following degree. Weekend information editor Wes Davis may train a masterclass in purposeful iOS homescreens. He retains a couple of 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 on the lookout for issues on my telephone,” he informed me. “All of this sort of began with me leaping on the bandwagon of ‘I need to use my telephone much less, and have it’s much less distracting.” The grayscale shortcut icons on his homescreen reduce down on visible litter, 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 on the lookout for. 

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 for the time being. If he ever begins utilizing a special app, he’ll preserve the identical shortcut icon and have it launch a brand new app. “I don’t need to put a brand new app in there and get myself used to on the lookout for that icon.” 

Information editor Jay Peters takes a extra easy strategy. Like me, he finds the fixed presence of app icons distracting. “If I don’t see the app proper on my homescreen I’m approach much less possible 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 so much in a brief time frame. “If I’m occurring an enormous 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 preserve it to only these seven apps.”

Each of my colleagues have achieved a degree of stability of their digital lives that I love. I additionally heard from many extra who stated that they nonetheless preserve a homescreen full of app icons, however they nearly 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 a couple of particular person I talked to agreed that the Siri instructed apps on the high of the search pane received actually good sooner or later previously. As a rule, the app I’m on the lookout for is true there earlier than I even sort a letter into the search bar.

That form of factor offers me hope for a future the place customized AI may also help me discover what I’m on the lookout for 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 a bit braveness to go away your consolation zone behind.