PT, Phone Home (Premium)

I may be a little too obsessed when it comes to efficiency. But I configure my PCs, tablets, and smartphones uniquely and consistently, with each optimized for the apps I use most often. Well, that’s the goal. But my phone’s home screen doesn’t really reflect this ideal, and so I’ve started experimenting.

If you think about these devices, each offers what I think of as primary and secondary ways to launch apps, at a high level, though there are usually even more methods. Perhaps not surprisingly, I try to configure each so that the apps I use most frequently are easily accessible at all times.

Windows

Windows users can launch apps from the Taskbar, Start, Search, via shortcuts on the Desktop and elsewhere, and any other number of ways. I routinely launch winver with the legacy Run dialog, for example, and if you use PowerToys, you may be familiar with, and prefer, PowerToys Run.

Everyone is different. But I use the Taskbar to launch those apps I use the most often. That means I remove the superfluous Search and Task view items, as I don’t use them and/or can use keyboard shortcuts to access those functions. I remove pre-pinned shortcuts for apps I don’t use. And I pin, from left to right, shortcuts for File Explorer, Edge or whatever web browser I’m using at the moment, Typora, Visual Studio Code, Notepad, Notion, Affinity Photo 2, Paint, and Slack. These are the apps I literally use every day.

I use the Start menu sparingly, and so I don’t bother too much with customizing it. My ADHD is strong enough that I do remove or uninstall pinned apps I will never use, especially the crapware or whatever that Microsoft (LinkedIn, etc.) and PC makers put there. And I remove enough pinned apps that they all fit on the menu without needing to scroll. I do add a Visual Studio shortcut there on all my PCs. And I’ve been adding a Call of Duty shortcut on those PCs I use for games. But that’s about it. Aside from Visual Studio, the apps I access most often from Start are Clipchamp, Microsoft Store, Settings, and Xbox in no particular order.

For the other apps I need to run from time-to-time, I use Search: I tap the Windows key on the keyboard and start typing. To run Discord, for example, I would just type disc and then tap Enter, since the Discord search result will be highlighted at that point. Writing that out was a bit strange, as I do this unthinkingly now. It just happens.

Put simply, the Taskbar is my primary way of launching apps in Windows. And some combination of Start and Search, and the random use of Run, is collectively my secondary way of launching apps. That’s the division, between continuously throughout the day and sometimes. As a desktop platform, Windows is used primarily for work, or for what many now call creation, and the apps I use–and the way I access them–reflect that.

iPad

The tablet I use–which means whatever iPad I’m currently using–is optimized differently. Here, too, everyone is different, but here, too, I have apps that I access every day and those I access left frequently. And the way I configure the UI, in this case a Home screen with a Dock and then an App Library screen with what I call an All apps list, is based on how I use this device.

While tablets like the iPad can be used for work/creation, that’s not how I use this device. I use the iPad semi-exclusively for what we think of as consumption activities, primarily reading. And it is perhaps not surprising that I use the iPad’s version of the Taskbar, the Dock, to hold shortcuts for the apps I use every day. This is doubly convenient because you hold an iPad in your hands, and the Dock puts those app icons near your hands.

My iPad Dock has the following apps from left to right: Kindle, Microsoft Edge (or whatever browser I’m currently using), Substack, Instapaper (read-later), Google (for the Discovery feed), feeeed (an iOS-only news feed), Apple News+, Google News (for the Technology section), Washington Post, and New York Times. Oddly, I access those each morning in the opposite direction, moving from the far right (NYT) to the left.

That’s probably straightforward to most. But because of the iPad’s unique form factor and usage, the Home screen and other app launching interfaces create an interesting set of options that will be configured quite differently depending on the person. For example, many would consider the Home screen the primary way to launch apps on this device, either in tandem with, or instead of, the Dock. Many will use multiple Home screens, and/or some combination of folders (which contain app icons) and/or widgets, for organizational purposes. Those with multiple Home screens might consider the first home screen their place for the apps they use the most often and subsequent screens secondary places. The App Library is thus a sort of tertiary place, with its All apps screen and search capabilities in there as well.

I keep it simple. I use a single iPad Home screen, but it’s full from top to bottom.

There are widgets at the top that I use for at a glance access to things like weather (Mexico City and Macungie) the time and date, and the battery status of this device and peripherals like my AirPods. They’re at the top because I rarely need to touch them.

And then there are app icons, in the traditional grid in the middle, with a single folder for social networking apps. These apps are arranged in some combination of frequency of use (where those I think I use the most are in the lower left, close to my hand(s)) and symmetry, meaning apps that are similar are together. So the bottom row is music apps, plus Duolingo (though I mostly use Duolingo on my phone). The second row up has Instagram and Facebook on the right (where they’re easily accessible, again because of where my hand(s) is/are), plus Outlook mobile and that Social folder. Next up is four video apps (right to left: YouTube, Apple TV, Netflix, and Hulu, though I typically access YouTube much more frequently than the others combined). And then Google Photos and Apple Photos (neither of which I access all that often), App Store, and Settings.

And … yeah. This one is weird. I really don’t access any of those apps that much on the iPad. I don’t have App & Website Activity enabled in Screen Time, so I have to guess here. But I bet I access Instagram and Facebook more than any other app on the home screen, followed by YouTube and then maybe YouTube Music. The others are rarely used. I check for app updates sometimes in App Store. I always download a few TV shows and movies in Netflix when I’m flying, just in case. But I could remove most of those. I don’t because I guess it doesn’t matter.

But the phone is … different. Even though it’s very similar to the iPad in many ways.

Phone

To date, my phone and iPad home screens have mirrored each other in obvious ways (and that’s true whether I’m using a Pixel or an iPhone, the configurations are basically identical). That is, I place the apps I use the most often in the Dock and I use a single Home screen for other apps I (ostensibly) access regularly. It’s optimized similarly, where the most frequently used apps are in the bottom right of the Home screen and the least frequently used are in the upper left: I’m right-handed, and you can use a phone with one hand most of the time.

There is one nuance here that is iPhone-specific. With a Pixel, you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access the All apps list, and that list is alphabetic, from top to bottom, but with the four most-recently-accessed apps at the top. With the iPhone, you swipe to the right from Home to access App Library. And I “use” App Library pretty regularly on the iPhone, whereas I basically never do on the iPad. And that’s because some key “tertiary” apps (for lack of a better term) are readily available there. Key among them the Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator apps, which are conveniently (on my iPhone) easily seen and thus accessed.

But the home screen layout has been bugging me lately. The thing is, I don’t access most of the apps on the Home screen all that often. I’m not even sure I access two of the four Dock icons all that often (and don’t get started on how the Dock is limited to just four icons, even on my large Pro Max model).

Maybe there’s a better way.

Here, I obviously mean “for me.” There’s nothing universal about this, and for many people, the phone is their most personal and most often-used device. So this is highly subjective and will vary by person. Tied to this, my life is what it is. I work from home and don’t commute. I rarely leave my house during the day (though I walk around to eat lunch out every day when we’re in Mexico), and I only go out at night 2–4 times per week (or, in Mexico, every single night).

I also didn’t have App & Website Activity enabled in Screen Time on the iPhone I’m currently using, but I just enabled it so I can check back on this. But thinking about the apps that (I think) I use the most often on the phone, there are only a few in the top tier. They are Camera, Microsoft Edge (or whatever web browser), Instagram, Facebook, Google Photos, Duolingo, and Outlook. I do use each every single day. I think.

Beyond that, there are audio apps I use a lot. I listen to podcasts in Pocket Casts and/or audiobooks in Audible just about every day, if not every day. I listen to music in YouTube Music 3 or 5 times a week. I access apps like Slack, Skype, and Twitter/X either as needed (a message arrives) or occasionally. I use Notion several times a week, I bet. And then there are apps that are either context-specific (Uber, which I only use when away from home, Google Maps) or just occasional. Apple Health (or, on Pixel, Fitbit). The Blink app, which is for the camera we have on the balcony here in Mexico City. Etc.

But what kicked off this rethinking was two apps I’ve kept in the Dock since I got the first iPhone in 2007: Phone and Messages. These seem central to the phone experience. But the more I think about it, the more I think that I don’t use these apps very often, especially the phone. And that both are, in effect, notification-based. When something happens, they’ll let me know. Do I need them right there, all the time, in the Dock?

I don’t know. I did earlier come to the realization that I could disable notifications in secondary messaging apps in Windows–Skype, for example–because I would be alerted by my phone if something happened, and my phone is always here next to me. Is there some version of my phone configuration in which I just hide those apps, or maybe just phone–which, let’s face it, is primarily an annoyance these days and not something I actually use a lot–and access them only as needed?

As I write this, I’m not sure where I’ll land. But last night, I started messing around with the layout. I didn’t touch the Dock at first, but instead started experimenting with multiple home screens.

I listed the apps I think I use the most above, and I started with a Home screen that contains just those apps (plus Phone and Messages), oriented toward the bottom right of the screen for accessibility. It was a bit empty, so I added a large Weather widget at the top. And then a Smart Stack widget that I’m still iffy about. (This is an Apple thing where you can combine several widgets into a single rotating widget view.)

The most often used apps are obvious enough. But the secondary apps are all over the place. I probably use Pocket Casts/Audible, a lot, followed by some messaging apps (mostly Slack), and then Authenticator apps/Proton Pass, and maybe Notion. None of which really go together.

At first, I went with a themed set of Home screens that felt like it wouldn’t last. Media, Messaging/Social, and Work (for lack of a better word), from left to right after the first screen. As I did this, I thought that maybe these should be folders on a single screen. I felt like it might be too inconvenient to reach, say, an Authenticator app as needed and, if so, I would have to rethink this.

I’m experimenting with using more widgets. To date, I’ve mostly used widgets–phone or iPad–for that at-a-glance thing. But they can be interactive too. The Pocket Casts widget can be used to jump back into the most recent podcast episode or go to the main app view, for example.

And … yeah. I don’t know.

I guess what I’m looking for is two things. For the phone to give me easily access to the apps I really do use the most often. And then for it to give me convenient access to the apps I use less often, but often enough. I would rather not have to swipe repeatedly to find things. Which means multiple Home screens may not be ideal, in fact.

There’s also the possibility that I may want a sort of profiles feature, where I have different configurations for Mexico and back home because I use the phone somewhat differently in each place. That sounds tedious, though. In general, I just move a few apps (Uber, United Airlines, whatever) around as needed on trips.

So I hosed the multiple screens. It was too much.

I went back to a single Home screen. Just put the apps I use most often in the most prominent places. Added a few folders and rethought what those might be. This is still in flux, what isn’t, but here’s where I started. Or continued, or whatever.

The Dock is not really my most often-used-apps, but it’s the apps I want to access the most easily, I guess. The apps in the lower-right are basically the apps I use most often, and I added Calculator because I do unique use that app on the phone, often for calculating a tip, and we do eat out every single day here in Mexico. The apps I need a bit less often–Authenticator apps, Proton Pass, music, audio, and video apps, and messaging/social app that aren’t Facebook and Instagram–are in folders. So one extra tap away, but no swiping.

I do sort of like the idea of using widgets more. Weather is a given, but for now I’m experimenting with Pocket Casts.

But the big deal, for me, the big conceptual hurdle, was pushing the Phone and Messaging apps out of the Dock and, ultimately, hiding them in a folder. I’ll be notified as necessary. And if I need to text the wife or kids, or whomever, it’s close enough.

But maybe there’s more refinement to do. Fewer icons, but more folders and widgets? Cripes, I could turn this into a career. A non-paying career, granted. But where does it end?

Step away from the phone, Paul. After all, you have smartwatches, an Apple TV, and other devices to consider too. Ugh.