Re-thinking the iPhone's home screen
Posted Jul 21st 2008 4:30PM by Giles Turnbull
The iPhone's home screen works just fine with 16 application icons on the main screen and four more on the dock at the bottom. It still works well with another screenful of 16 more apps on the adjacent screen. But, says Chris Devers, as you start adding more apps, the home screen UI doesn't scale well to cope with them. Flicking across five screens of apps to find the one you want is time-consuming. And moving an app from screen five to screen three is chaotic, unless you've left "gaps" on each screen as you went along - in which case you'd have six to juggle, not five. And even then, it's still chaotic.
OK, so not everyone is going to be collecting that many third party apps. But for people who do, says Chris, there needs to be a better solution than this. He's posted a set on Flickr to illustrate his point.
What might work? A Quicksilver- or Spotlight-style app, where you type some characters from the name of the app you want and it gets launched? Or a gesture launcher, where you "draw" what you're looking for?
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Crash Gordon said 4:51PM on 7-21-2008
i was just going to suggest something very similar to the folders idea.
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Tano said 4:52PM on 7-21-2008
it would be nice if you could do a layout of the iPhone screen in iTunes. Drag app to the right screen and then sync phone
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Bob S. said 4:53PM on 7-21-2008
If you're disorganized, you have only yourself to blame.
I put icons for the four apps I use most into the "dock."
I put icons for the other apps I use frequently onto the first page.
I put icons for apps I use less frequently onto the second page.
I put icons for apps I don't use onto the third page. (You can't delete Apple's apps but I have no use for some of them, such as Stocks.)
That's 52 icon slots. I've even done a little UI work myself by putting the most common apps on each page into a slot where it's most convenient for a tap.
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Jeremy said 5:00PM on 7-21-2008
Hey! Great minds and all that!
Camperton said 5:01PM on 7-21-2008
Likewise.
Tony Bowman said 5:08PM on 7-21-2008
this is what i do with mine.
ideally there would be a tab in iTunes when you click your phone that would allow you to arrange your app there, using the mouse, and then have the changes reflected and updated automatically on the phone.
Dave said 5:38PM on 7-21-2008
Well said!
Camperton said 5:41PM on 7-21-2008
Tony Bowman
That would be great.
DrWho said 5:49PM on 7-21-2008
lol - it really doesn't have to be complicated
ZeroCorpse said 5:51PM on 7-21-2008
Me too. This works fine. I don't have trouble navigating at all.
elby said 10:20AM on 7-22-2008
" ...I put icons for the four apps I use most into the "dock."
I put icons for the other apps I use frequently onto the first page ..."
Wow Bob S. Thats brilliant! Why did none of the rest of us think of doing that? Let me guess. You went to college am I right?
Itchy Pajamas said 4:55PM on 7-21-2008
I'd like the iPhone menus to be hierarchical. We would be able to create our own "Category" icons on any page which drill down to pages at another level, where we could put the icons for applications.
Each page (other than the home page) would have a place to press to go Up a Level, and directly Home.
We also need a way to create our icon screens where we can 1) Create a new page 2) Select the apps we want on that page. It would be great if we could also set this up on a Mac/PC and then sync the menu structure to the iPhone.
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Stephen Lang said 5:02PM on 7-21-2008
What we need is some sort of 'launcher' button, located on every page, say in the lower left hand corner. It could also be used to launch settings, shut off your iPhone, and perform other commonly used tasks.
Let's call it the 'Start' button...
welchb said 5:31PM on 7-21-2008
@steven lang
|cackle|
Well done.
Actually, one of the things that kills me from having jailbroken my 1st gen is an equivalent of bossprefs in the appstore. It is completely ludicrous that it takes 6-8 freaking taps to turn on/off my bluetooth radio.
(from sleep)
1) click home (or sleep/wake) button
2) swipe
3) click home (optional if I hadn't been in another app)
4) nav to first page (optional if I happen to have left it on 1)
5) click prefs
6) click general
7) click bluetooth
8) turn on bluetooth.
SloopJohnB said 5:05PM on 7-21-2008
I think Apple should come out with something like this. You Touch an unoccupied area of the home screen (black background) for 2sec and a small ´folder´ or ´icon´ pops up. You tap on that item and a window opens displaying ´add´ and edit´ buttons at the bottom or upper bar and a blank list. You could add apps to your ´folder´ by tapping 'add' and 'delete/move to another folder' by tapping 'edit'. You could rearrange the order of the items on the list just like u do with your favorites. Instead of a list apple could also make like a ´desktop´, a grid of apps inside of the folder, that would be cool too. After closing the ´folder´ u can touch its icon for 2sec and a small window pops up displaying ´delete folder´, ´rename´ and ´cancel´. The ´cancel´ is there in case u just wanna move the folder around while its wiggling.
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TMM said 5:07PM on 7-21-2008
I don't see the point of this discussion.
Only a small number of people would actually mess up there phone like this. Why keep an app on the phone that you don't need at least once a week?
Let me Explain how brilliantly Apple provided a solution, which you don't seem to see:
The App Store was designed, from the ground up, to be not only a store, but kind of repository and an archive, as well AND it was designed to be accessible from anywhere, any time, through the iPhones Internet connection:
It is save to delete an App, even if you bought it, because you can easily reinstall a Programm from the App Store, withut having to pay for it.
You don't need to keep all on it, all the time.
How often will you need that E-Book, after you have read it? Do you need 10 games installed at the same time?
Problem sovled.
And for 95% of users there isn't even a problem with the Home Screen, because they won't have 50 Apps at once.
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atuck said 6:18PM on 7-21-2008
With a litany of games and web links in addition to regularly used apps, things can get out of hand. Also if its something I use only once every few weeks, you best be damn sure I want to use it immediately when it would come in handy. Just sayin.
LBDG said 5:06PM on 7-21-2008
I've taken to putting my most used apps on Screen #2, then utilities on Screen #1 and games on Screen #3.
I then use screen #2 as my "home" screen, allowing me just one flick left or right to get to what I need.
It was a pain in the butt to reorganize this way initially, but once I got it set up it hasn't been that bad to maintain...yet.
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The Duck said 5:14PM on 7-21-2008
Have one gesture for Expose. Small versions of all your screens fill one screen. Click on the one you want. Done and done. Too many screens to fit on a page? Flick over to the next page of Expose screens.
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Jeremy said 5:18PM on 7-21-2008
This... THIS is the answer!