The longer you have an iPhone or iPad, the more apps you’ll have. Some of them have been removed from your iOS screens a long time ago, others are hanging on for dear life, and others are going to be mainstays. So as your app count grows and grows, how do you keep them organized so that you don’t lose efficiency or effectiveness while using the device?
It all comes down to screen and folder management.
In this article, I’m going to give you a walk-through of my screens and folders on my iPhone so you can see exactly how to lay them out for maximum productivity.
The Dock
The dock is the only consistent area you have on the iPhone, as it carries over onto every screen you have. In this area you will want to place your most useful apps. Notice that I didn’t say your most-used apps. That’s because apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Mai really shouldn’t be positioned on the dock. The dock should contain apps that propel you forward rather than keep you standing still (or worse, hold you back).
For instant communication, I’ve got both Phone and Messages in my dock, alongside Flow for task management and Launch Center Pro (which can access a multitude of my other apps, as outlined in this post).
The dock is a sacred place, so only populate it with your most useful apps.
The Home Screen
Next to the dock, the home screen is very sacred as well. This screen is where you want your most used apps that can also serve to keep you moving. Again you’ll notice I don’t have any social networking apps on this screen, only apps that either provide me with essential information without sucking me in for too long or apps that I can enter information into. This is key.
I don’t keep Mail here, either. I use AwayFind for email notifications, so it has a place on this screen. For calendar management, I’m using Doodle, and my weather app of choice is S•lar. For a more robust alarm clock experience, I’m using Night Stand HD (although I have started to shift back to using the native app once again), and I use Soulver for calculations and so on. Safari does have a home on this screen, as do more productivity-centric apps like Checkmark, Evernote, My Minutes, EISENHOWER, Lift, and Asana. Every person is going to have a different set of apps on this screen, but the thing to remember is that the apps on your home screen are there because you access them often – and the screen’s layout should be as useful as the apps on it.
(You’ll also notice that I keep the bottom row empty in order to avoid inadvertent clicks while scrolling through pages, and I also don’t keep any folders on the home page. Again…the quicker the access, the better.)
The Second Screen
The second screens is almost all folders. It contains apps of various types within each folder, and the folders are named as such. These apps aren’t accessed as regularly as the apps on my dock or home screen, but if you look at the categories of the folders then you’ll notice that they are ideal app types for the platform (yes, even games).
The Settings app is the only “non-foldered” app on this screen, and for good reason. I may not to access it as often as I do the times on my home screen, but when I need it – I want it readily available. So should you.
(Settings shouldn’t be on the home screen because the app lends itself to fiddling, which is not the idea behind using your iPhone. Just wait until you read where I’ve put the App Store app…)
Each folder is named after an activity that will be undertaken by the apps within it. Mail finally makes an appearance here in the Communications folder (although there’s a good chance you’ll hear from it more often in Notification Center). You can quickly look at this screen if you have an app in mind and know where to look. That’s what you want in the second screen; it’s where the bulk of your apps will live.
The Third Screen
This is the last screen you should have on your iPhone (Yep, no more than three screens is the goal). On this screen I place the apps that can serve to distract – and I also put some of my hidden treasure apps here. Fish is one of those. I like to revisit that app every so often, so by not burying it in a folder and instead on the last screen, I don’t forget about it altogether.
The Third (and last) Screen
The App Store is here for two reasons. It keeps you from surfing for apps more often than using the apps you have, and the update badge (when updates are needed) doesn’t stare at you in the face nearly as often. Newsstand is here because I can’t put it in a folder and it hasn’t given me much in terms of use cases yet, and all of the stock apps that I don’t use sit in a folder called “Not Using”. I can’t get rid of them, so I bury them there instead.
You’ll notice that my social network apps are here as well. If I didn’t have Launch Center Pro, they’d probably reside only second screen in a folder. But my layout allows me to put them on the last screen instead, keeping the distractable nature of social media one additional swipe from getting opened more often.
The Last Word
Remember that you can flick your finger to the left from your home screen and search for an app if you need to access it, so managing your screens and folders in the way I’ve outlined doesn’t bury apps too deeply.
The iPhone is meant to keep you connected while you’re on the go, and the efficient and effective management of your apps through the use of screens and folders can really boost your productivity to new heights.
But you have to do the front-end work to make it happen because, well, there’s not an app for that.
Photo credit: Yutaka Tsutano (CC BY 2.0)
