8 iPhone Home Screen Customization Tips

Learn how to move groups of app icons together, reorder quickly, hide apps without deleting them completely and much more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for customizing your iPhone's Home Screen.
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So you probably already know the basics of how to rearrange apps on your Home Screen. For instance you can tap and hold an app and then drag and now you can move it anywhere you want on that screen or even to the right and it will go to the next screen and you can drop it there. But that can be a pain if you have to move multiple apps. But you can do a group of apps by tapping and holding one and then starting to move that one around. Then you can tap other apps and put them together in a group. You can see how I'm dragging four apps right now. I can go to another screen and drop them there.
You can also use the same technique to quickly reorder apps. For instance, let's say I want a new order for the bottom two rows here. I pick the first app and tap and hold that. Then start dragging it like before. Now I'm going to tap all the other apps in the exact order where I want them to appear. So I'll do this one next, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. Then I am just going to release it where I want them all to be and they are all going to fall in exactly the order in which I selected them. I could have dragged them to another Home Screen and dropped them all there as well and they would have followed that order.
Now you can also take an app that you don't use very often off of your Home Screen without actually deleting it. You see you've got various Home Screens. I've got actually three, make that four, here. But if you continue to the next it's actually going to take you to your Library Screen. That's the last one over to the right. Here you have all your apps grouped by category and you could also search for them or just by tapping in the Search Box at the top you get an alphabetical listing. You need to tap on the right here to jump to a letter. So you don't have to have all your apps on Home Screens. Any app that is missing from a Home Screen would still be here in the Library with everything else. So to take an app off of all your Home Screens without deleting it just tap and hold that app and then select Remove App. On the next screen instead of selecting Delete App, select Remove From Home Screen. Now you can see it is not on the Home Screen anymore. It is not on any of your other Home Screens. But if you go to the Library and then you search for it you can find it right there and you can run it from there. So all the ones that you rarely ever use just take them off your Home Screen so they are not cluttering things up.
Now you may have already noticed how I've got the Calculator App here on the first screen and the Calculator App on the second screen. So you can put the same app on more than one screen. So you can have screens that group apps for various purposes and if one app fits in two different groups you can have it on both those screens. So, for instance, if I also want to have the Notes App here on the second screen all I need to do is go to the Library, search for Notes, and then tap and drag it and then go back to the screen I want, drop it there. Now you can see it is on that screen but it is still here on this screen.
You saw before how I got three different screens of icons. I also have some widgets here on a fourth screen. If you tap and hold the screen until everything wiggles and you get the little minus buttons for removing apps, you can tap the dots at the bottom here and it shows you all your Home Screens. There are check boxes under each. So you can remove some of these Home Screens, like that. So now I've got this first one and if I swipe over I go right to the Library. The other screens are hidden. You can also use this to reorder screens. So you can go in here and you can drag screens around and change the order. So now I've got the screen full of games that one is the second screen. The alternative Home Screen here that I've got, that's the third screen.
Now you can change which screens you see at any one time without having to go in and check and uncheck Home Screens. Go into Settings and then look for Focus. Even if you don't use Focus Modes to say quiet notifications, you can use them to change the Home Screen. So I'm going to add a new Focus Mode here. I'm going to choose Custom and I'm just going to give it a temporary name, Test. I can choose a color and an icon and whatever I want there. I'm going to choose Next and then I'm going to customize it and I can assign Notifications and do all sorts of other things you can do with Focus. I can also choose the Home Screens that are present in this Focus Mode. So I'm going to tap right there and I'm going to choose this screen right here and the widget screen. These will be the two that's available in this Focus Mode. Then Done. Now when I go and change Focus Modes to Test you could see this is my Home Screen now, not that first one. Then I've got the Widgets as the second screen and the Library after that. If I want to go back to the other mode I just turn Off this mode to go into my normal non-Focus mode and you can see I've got those three screens showing but without the Widgets because that's what I've got set right here for Normal Mode.
Now if you customize your Home Screens by removing apps, changing the order, and all of that and you want to start fresh, you want to start over again. There is a way to Reset your Home Screens. If I go into the Settings app and then I go to General and then I scroll to the bottom and then you could see Transfer or Reset iPhone. If I select that I can tap Reset here and this is all pretty scary going this far. But notice that when you get here it actually gives you the option to Reset All Settings. That's the dangerous one! But you can also reset your Home Screen layout. So let's do that. It has you Confirm there. Now when I go back to the Home Screen you can see it is set to the Default Mode. It's got a couple of widgets at the top. It's got all the default apps there. The default apps flow over onto the second screen here. Then notice the cool thing is that after all the default apps, they end here with the Tips app, I have all of my third party apps in alphabetical order. So starting here with the Apple Store App that I've added and then going through all of my other apps, all the way to the last one alphabetically. Then I can start customizing all over again.
So I hope you found these tips for customizing your iPhone's Home Screen useful. Thanks for watching. Related Subjects: iPhone (267 videos)
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