Rethinking the Home Screen (Premium)

The web is awash with ideas about how we can optimize our smartphone home screens to be more efficient and less distracted. And that makes sense: Our phone is our most personal and most frequently-used personal device, a constant companion with which many of us have developed an unhealthy relationship.

Fortunately, I’ve worked from home for decades, so I don’t really have my face in my phone unless I’m out in the world doing something, which is a lot less common here in Pandemic Year 2020. Regardless, I think about optimizing my smartphone home screen(s) so that the apps I use most often are right at my fingertips, literally. Just as I do with Windows---where my most-used apps are pinned to the taskbar---or on my iPad.

Sticking to smartphones for now, my configuration has of course evolved over the years, but I suspect if I could find a screenshot from several years ago and compare it with the phones I’ve used this year, they’d look very similar with regards to app choices, locations, and layout. (And of course this differs between iPhone and Android because Apple doesn’t actually let you put home screen icons anywhere you want.)

That said, my home screen configuration is based on what I believe I need or use the most. Well, sort of: I use two home screens on Android, and I arrange the app icons somewhat by type too.

My primary home screen has Fitbit, productivity apps (Outlook, Skype, Teams, OneNote), Google Play Store, and social media apps (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Photos). My second home screen has reading apps and media apps. The dock, which appears on every home screen has camera, messaging, phone, Edge, and Google Maps (from right to left, since I try to put the apps I need the most towards the bottom and right, at least on Android, where they are most easily reachable).

And I mix things up somewhat based on what’s happening. For example, when I travel, which has been rare this year, I temporarily add a Travel folder to my first home screen with apps for the hotel and/or airline I’m using, Uber and Lyft, and the like.

Sometimes I wonder, though, what these home screens would look like if they literally reflected the apps I do use the most. And I don’t even have to guess: Thanks to digital wellbeing tools in both Android and iOS, I don’t have go by own memory. These platforms can tell me exactly which apps I really use the most.

So let’s take a look.

Here are my top 10 most-used apps over the past 7 days:

Audible. Home screen 2.

Edge. Home screen 1.

Google (feed). (To the left of home screen 1.)

Google Maps. Dock. (This is random and skews the results as we used it for a 45-minute hour drive this past weekend.)

Netflix. Home screen 2. (I use this at the gym to watch a movie.)

Fitbit. Home screen 1.

Google TV/Play Movies & TV. Not on a home screen. I used this previously at the gym to watch a movie.

Camera. Dock.

OneNote. Home screen 1....