My iPhone home screen is one of my always-on, never ending project. It’s probably one of the most difficult element to find a good balance for. If you think about it for a second, you quickly realise how many times a day you actually look at and interact with this screen.
Over the years this screen has become bigger, being able to fitting more icons, making it even more difficult to find a proper and functional layout.
Having said that, today I want to share my current first page home screen setup, as it has been fairly constant for a few months now.
Before I start listing the apps, let me specify the device: iPhone 11 Pro Max. Yep, it’s the big boy, but likely my hands are big enough that I can “easily” achieve one-hand usage of this device, so even the icons at the very top can be reached quite ok.
Without further delay, here is the breakdown.
Fantastical
I’ve always been a default calendar user, mostly because it’s still the only way to see the date on your homescreen as part of the dynamic icon. As I’ve become a more regular Apple Watch user, I’m relying more on that to see the current date, so I started looking for better calendar apps. I’ve landed on Fantastical, especially after the latest update. I like the different views, the natural event input and overall the design is definetly more polished than the stock app.
The badge is not related to events or tasks, it’s the only way to see the current date on the homescreen (lame Apple, very lame).
Clock
Honestly, this is a bit of legacy choice. The reason why it’s up there is because the clock was my only alarm clock. Nowadays I use the alarm clock on my Apple Watch as well, so really there is no reason to keep the clock up there, but so far I haven’t found a better alternative, so…(any suggestions?)
Dark Sky
This is by far the best weather app out there. Especially thanks to the hyper local forecast and alerts, this is absolutely a must-have. I’ll specify that the hyper local notifications only work in selected countries (I’m in UK where this work great).
Also, now that Apple has bought Dark Sky, we’ll have to see what’s going to happen to this app. Probably it’s going away in favour of a deeper system default integration, in which case I’ll have to switch to the standard Weather app. Let’s see what will happen.
Settings
Well, I guess everyone is familiar with this app. Why there? I do find myself more often than not in there, mostly for Bluetooth (I know you can go via Control Centre), screen brightness and CarPlay settings.
Again, I couldn’t find any better alternatives, so like Clock, I’m open for suggestions!
Instagram
This is my happy place. After getting rid of the Facebook app due to the incredible level of noise in my timeline, I’ve kept Instagram around as a very curated oasis of relaxing content. I like the never ending stream of photos and the fact that I can dip in and out at any time, with the confidence of always finding something new to look at.
Photos
For all of its limitation, I find the Photos app to still be the best way to browse my camera roll. I like the improvements delivered with iOS 13, with the automatic curation that is able to bring out the best snaps over the past. I don’t really use any of the editing features to improve my pictures, as there are more powerful editors (Darkroom) out there. When I do use them, it’s mostly to make quick notes over my pictures.
App Store
Again, this is a bit of a legacy choice way back when there was no Auto-update for apps. These days I still go in there at least once a day to check for updates because even if I have auto-updates turned on, they don’t always happen automatically.
Plus I do like the new editorial style in the App Store and this allowed me to discover a few new apps over time.
Phone
So 1995. I know. But I also use my phone for my work very often, so I ended up living it on my main screen for easy access to contacts and recent/missed calls.
Microsoft Teams
This is a new addition to my homescreen and how course this one is too, related to work. My company has recently added more and more Office 365 features, and I have to say I’m quite happy with it, and especially how Microsoft has created awesome iOS productivity apps, making the iPad my almost 100% primary computer (damn you SAP).
Google Home
Google home on iOS? Yep. I did start using HomeKit, but especially in the UK we still have only a handful of accessories compatible and they are all super expensive. So, I’ve switched to Google Home, where I can integrate more devices and I can have a wider choice of options to start with.
The UI is not the best (still better than the Home app – low bar to clear), but for what I need it, it works ok. The biggest downside is not being able to use the Control Centre integration, but the upsides are worth this trade-off.
Our Expenses
This is a pretty nice app that I found browsing on the AppStore. This app allows you to easily split home expenses. I use it with my girlfriend, so we can keep an easy tab on how much each one of us spend on common expenses, helping us keeping costs balanced and under control.
1Password
I don’t think I have to say much about 1Password. In today’s day and age, everything is digital and I have way too many accounts to keep a tab on. 1Password is pretty much the best password manager out there. With deep integration with iOS, you can easily call up passwords for every app or websites you use on a daily basis.
It’s free to start with, but I’ve been a subscriber for years now as it’s the best money I’ve ever spent.
YouTube
Even before the quarantine started, YouTube has always been a great source of learning and entertainment. I’ve been a premium subscriber for a couple of years now, and not seeing any ads has been a great user experience improvement.
Probably my only two complaints are the lack of picture in picture support (definitely needed on iPad) and the lack of external display support. When I connect my iPad to TVs, you get the stupid letterboxed experience, which makes me use Safari to access YouTube instead, just so I can have true full screen support.
Tweetbot
By far the best Twitter client for iOS. Again, there are two simple reasons: chronological timeline and no ads. The first is very much the most important so I can actually follow a conversation in the way it happened, rather than that mambo jumbo algorithm. The lack of ads is less important, but still nice.
Of course Twitter does hate on third party clients (who knows why – ads I guess), so you end up missing some first party features like polls, but I can definitely live without those.
Reeder
I do rely on RSS feeds for my news on a daily basis. Since the demise of Google Feed, many players entered the game for RSS feed providers. In this case, I use Feedly as the aggregator and Reeder as my iOS client of choice. I periodically look for possible alternatives, but none so far have the same polishness and cleanliness of Reeder.
Apollo
Reddit can be a daunting platform to explore. Not easy to navigate and not easy to discover. Apollo does a decent job at both, allowing you to easily enjoy the subreddits you are subscribed to, plus allowing you to find new interesting stuff.
The app design also makes it easy to pitch in conversations and posting. You can easily start for free, with subscriptions allowing you to further customise the app and the mobile Reddit experience.
Google Maps
Well what can I say. Apple Maps has certainly improved, but nowhere near the quality of Google Maps. Again, this may be different in the US, but where I live in the UK, Apple Maps still isn’t great.
I do actually use Waze for car navigation, so the reason it’s not on the main screen is because it actually lives in the main screen of my CarPlay setup. Google Maps is here because it’s much more useful for navigation on foot, retail info and all sort of local directions.
I’m not a fan of the new icon, I’d like to have an options to toggle between multiple options, but I don’t think we’ll ever get there.
Television Time
I do watch a fair amount of TV series and I’ve found this simple little app helps me keeping track of all my shows and how many episodes I’ve watched. Plus, it’s also a great place to discover new series based on previous watchlists.
The UI is also very nice, especially after you learn the various gestures to access episodes lists and extra info.
Overcast
If you listen to podcasts, Overcast should be your go-to app. It’s fast, user friendly and packed of great features to improve the listening experience. Smart Speed is especially the king of all these features. By automagically shorten and removing long pauses, it makes for a faster listening experience without actually losing the understanding on what the hosts are saying. It’s way more polished than just listening a podcast at 1.5 or 2x.
Plus, if you were ever to run out of podcasts in your library, the suggestions page does a great job at finding more shows close to your tastes.
Messages
Again mostly business related, I do use Massages often, having to interface with people not on iOS or WhatsApp (difficult to imagine, but true). Another app that has gotten better over the years, especially in the media management, but still far away from the ease of use of WhatsApp, particularly when it comes to group conversations.
Safari
My go to web browser on iOS, thanks also to the newly introduced content blockers, which allow me to have a decent browsing experience, avoiding pop ups, auto playing videos, hundreds of banners that relegate the actual content to a tiny portion of the screen.
Another example of app that received lots of love during the years, actually making it a great browser, especially after the integration of a download manager.
Microsoft Outlook
It all started with using this app because of work, but it quickly began a way better option than the built in iOS Mail app. I’m longing for the day we’ll be actually able to set third party apps as default on iOS. Outlook works great, but as soon as you click on a email address you get the alert message that unless you have Mail installed, there’s nothing for you to see here.
Outlook has full File integration, plus easy linking to online storage options, making it a great choice for productivity on the go. I just wish for HTML formatting for signatures, to take it to the next step.
Spotify
I’ve recently switched from Apple Music to Spotify, or you could say I went back to Spotify after a brief Apple Music interlude. What I missed most is the superior playlist curation done from the Spotify team and AI. Every time you open the app, you are sure to find new music or to fall in love again with great classics, all without you having to do any digging around.
Considering that the price is the same and the catalogue is virtually the same, there’s a great value in Spotify music’s intelligence to make it a far superior music manager.
WhatsApp
This is probably my most used app in any given day. Fairly simple app, but it allows me to keep in contact with friends and family far and near. I especially like how easy it is to manage group communications.
Of course the biggest positive is that it’s cross platform, making sure everyone can be included in the conversation.
I guess you’d have noticed that the last row is empty. I did this in order to have the home screen “breathing” a bit. I didn’t like it when it was completely full of apps. Even if that would be the easiest row to get to, screen-position wise, I rather have that visual break, since as I mentioned I don’t really have any issues reaching the top of the screen anyway.
So, what do you think? I know it’s fairly conservative, but maybe you’ve found something interesting to try. If you want to chat more about this, or if you want to share your homescreen, tweet me @matteodallombra.
(Wallpaper is from the amazing team at The Verge)