How To Make Your Home Screen More Manageable and Efficient in Minutes – Android Edition

If you have never tried to organize your apps, you may find yourself frustrated, flipping from screen to screen looking for the app you want. As a librarian, I am always looking for ways to better organize my environment to minimize frustration and maximize efficiency.

Both iOS and Android have options to organize your home screen, and many of them are similar. In fact, last week we published an article on this same subject for iOS. However, Android comes with so many opportunities for customization, the screenshots you see here may not reflect what is on your phone.

Fun Fact: Beyond the differences between Android version numbers (currently 13), Pixel phones and Samsung phones have differences added by their manufacturers. Your mobile carrier may also have made changes to your version of Android if you bought your phone from them. Android users also have the option to use “launcher” apps, which provide many more customization options for the look and operation of your device.

Your Home Screen vs. Your App Drawer

Icons for your apps live in two different places. Whenever you install an app, it is always installed in your app drawer. Depending on your settings, it may or may not also create an icon on your home screen automatically. The home screen is the default screen you see when you unlock your phone. The app drawer can be accessed either by swiping up from the bottom of your phone screen or by tapping the app drawer icon (if available):

Screenshot of app drawer "waffle" icon

The app drawer arranges apps alphabetically, with a search bar at the top. There isn’t much room for customization here without a third-party launcher app, so the rest of this article will focus on organizing the home screen.

The home screen is what you see when you tap the home button/icon or swipe up from the bottom of the screen, depending on whether you have gestures set up. The home screen can actually be several “pages.” Swiping to the left or right from the home page will show you how many pages your home screen is.

Create a New Home Screen Page

To create a new home screen page, press and hold a blank space (between icons/widgets) until the menu overlay pops up. Lift your finger and swipe to the left or right until you see the +. Click on it to add a page.

Screenshot of the home screen options overlay showing the plus icon to add a new page

Adding and Removing Icons from the Home Screen

To add an icon to the home screen:

  • Open the app drawer
  • Press and hold on the app to add to home
  • When the home screen appears, slide your finger to the desired spot and lift your finger off the screen to drop the icon
  • If you receive a message that there is no more room on the home screen, try again, and drag the icon to the edge of the full page to create a new, blank page.

To see the same app icons at the bottom of every page, which is handy for apps you use often, you can drag icons to the “dock” (bottom row on the page).

To remove an icon from the home screen:

  • Press and hold an icon to reveal a menu
  • Lift your finger without sliding it on the screen to reveal a menu
  • Tap remove
Screenshot of the menu that appears with a long press of the app icon, where remove is the bottom option

Note: Deleting the icon from the home screen does not delete the app from your phone.

Quick Menus for Apps

Some app icons are designed to display a context menu when long-pressed (press and hold). These menus contain shortcuts to popular app options. Here is an example of the context menu that pops up when I long-press the Fitbit icon on my phone:

Fitbit context menu with shortcuts to track exercise, log food, log water, and log weight.

Tapping any of these brings me directly to the entry screen, rather than having to open the app and navigate to the logging screen.

Moving Icons Between Home Screen Pages

  • Press and hold an icon to select it
  • Drag it to the edge of the screen until it flips to the next page.
  • Slide your finger to the desired spot and lift your finger off the screen to drop the icon
  • If the screen does not have another page to put the icon on, you may need to follow the instructions above for adding a page.

Creating Folders to Group App Icons

To group icons, long-press an icon and drag it over the top of another icon and let go. The icon will now look like a split of both icons. Tap that to open the folder. Tap on “edit name” to add a name, if desired. Tap the three-button icon to sort or select additional apps.

Screenshot of the folder overlay, zoomed in on the app icons

To separate the icons again, open the folder and tap and hold one. Drag it out of the folder and lift your finger to let it drop on the home screen in a blank spot. You may need to slide between screens or create a new page to find an open spot.

Adding Widgets to Your Home Screen

  • Press and hold a blank space (between icons/widgets) until the menu overlay pops up.
  • Tap”widgets”
Screenshot showing menu overlay with wallpapers, settings, and widgets options showing
  • Scroll through the resulting page to see what widgets are available
  • To add one, press and hold until the home screen appears
  • Slide your finger to find the desired spot to drop the widget. Make sure there is enough room, as some widgets have minimum size requirements.
  • To resize a widget, press and hold it until a menu pops up. Select resize, then drag the dots on any side of the widget to make it larger or smaller.
Screenshot of widget menu with options: configure, app info, remove, padding, and resize.

Summary

Using folders and widgets to organize icons on your home screen can help you maximize productivity while minimizing frustration trying to find your apps. Do you use folders and widgets on your phone? Let us know in the comments.

How To Make Your Home Screen More Manageable and Efficient in Minutes: Apple Edition

Depending on how long you’ve had your smartphone, your home screen may be pretty crowded and unorganized. Luckily, there are easy ways you can organize your home screen.

screenshot of an iphone showing the home screen.

A Home screen is the main screen or screens on a smartphone where you can tap app icons to access the apps you have installed on your phone. In this post, we will discuss the Apple home screen. Stay tuned for an Android home screen post.

Home Screen and Dock

By default, an iOS device (iPhone or iPad) automatically adds a newly installed app to your home screen.

Screenshot showing location of page indicators and dock on an iPhone.

There is a dot for each home screen page you have. At the bottom of the screen some apps are displayed regardless of which page you are on. This area is called the dock.

Moving and Deleting Apps

To rearrange apps, hold your finger down on an empty area of the screen. The apps will start to wiggle and each app will have a minus symbol next to it. From here, drag the apps into the desired order. If there is an app you use frequently, you can drag it into the dock on the bottom of the screen.

screenshot showing the screen with minus symbols next to each icon

Tapping on the minus symbol next to an app gives you several options. Delete app removes the app completely from your device. You will get a confirmation that verifies that you want to remove the app completely. The second option is to remove the app from the Home Screen. This removes the app icon shortcut, but the app is still on your device and can be accessed on the App Library screen.

screenshot show the message that appears when remove app is tapped. The options include delete app, remove from home screen, and cancel.

Using Folders

You can group your apps into folders. For example, if you have more than one weather app, you may want to put them into a folder called Weather. To create a folder, long-press a blank area of the screen until the apps wiggle. Next, drag an app to another app you’d like to group it with. This automatically creates a folder. A default name is given, usually related to the type of apps you are grouping. To change the name, tap on the folder, and then the name of the folder. To remove a folder, drag all items out of the folder.

GIF showing how to drag an app onto another app in order to create a folder.

Long Pressing an App

Holding your finger down on an app icon gives you quick app shortcuts specific to that app. For example, long pressing the Notes app has several options. You can write a new note, a new checklist, scan a document, and more. There is also the option to choose edit home screen to rearrange your app icons.

screenshot showing what happens when you long press on an app.

The App Library

Starting with iOS 14, there is also the addition of the App Library, which lists all of your installed apps in organized groups. With the addition of the App Library, you no longer need to have all of your apps on the home screen. Each screen where you see app icons is called a page.

The App Library is accessed by swiping through all of your existing pages until you get to the last screen.

GIF showing how to swipe through all the home screen pages to get to the app library

The App Library organizes all of your installed apps into categories such as social, utilities, and more. You can also search your app library to easily access any of your currently installed apps.

screenshot showing app library

If there is an app that is in your App Library and it’s not on one of your home screen pages, tap into the search box. You will get a complete list of all your installed apps in alphabetical order or you can search for a particular app.

screenshot showing an alphabetical list of the app library

If an app is in your App Library but not on your home screen, locate the app in the app library. Once you have located the app, long press on the app icon and tap on add to home screen.

Home Screen Settings

There are several home screen settings you can change depending on your preferences. Go to the Settings App, then Home Screen (Home Screen & Multitasking on a iPad). You can choose whether newly downloaded apps should be added to the home screen or only the app library and whether you want to see notification badges in the App Library. On an iPad, you will also get the option to change app icon size and whether you want to show or hide the dock. Also in iPad settings, you have the option whether you want to see suggested and recent apps in the dock. The image below is a screenshot of the iPad settings.

screenshot showing the home screen and multitasking settings screen from an iPad

Have you used any of these methods to organize your home screen? Let us know in the comments!

How To Stop Being Disturbed – Android Edition

Last week we showed you how to use Do Not Disturb on Apple devices. There is a similar functionality available for Android devices that we’d like to highlight this week.

What Is the Do Not Disturb Feature?

In case you missed last week’s article, the Do Not Disturb (DND) feature is exactly what it sounds like. You can set your phone to turn off notifications so you won’t be disturbed. With Android, you can schedule times to not be disturbed or you can set it on the fly. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition, though. Suppose you’re used to setting DND at night to avoid being woken up, but your friend is expecting a baby and you want to make sure that call/text comes through no matter what time of day it is. You can set that contact’s communications to ring through the DND setting.

Use DND on the Fly, on a Schedule, or Both

If you’re about to go into a meeting or a classical music concert, you may want to turn on DND manually. To do that, swipe down from the top of your device to reveal shortcuts. If you only see 4 shortcuts, swipe down on those shortcuts to show more. Depending on where your DND shortcut is, you may need to swipe left or right to find it. In the screenshot, my DND is on the left side. I marked it in red to make it stand out.

Screenshot showing swipe-down menu with Do Not Disturb toggle circled in red on lower left

When you tap the icon quickly, it lights up and blocks all notifications and alarms (unless you have set exemptions). If you press and hold the icon, you get options to choose from. Tap the button at the top of the options page to turn it on or off. Just below that, you will see the kinds of exceptions you can make:

Screenshot of Do Not Disturb options screen
  • Clicking on People brings you to a screen with two options – messages and calls. Select one to choose who (from your contacts and conversations) can interrupt DND with that type of communication.
  • Selecting Apps will allow you to pick which app notifications come through. For example, if you don’t want to hear email notifications but want texts to break through the DND, this is where you would set that.
  • Alarms and other interruptions could be helpful if you want things like reminders and calendar events to override DND.
  • Schedules allows you to enter a sleep schedule or set options like activating DND automatically while gaming.
  • Duration will let you set an expiration time or leave it set to turn off manually.
    • By default, DND turns off sounds. If you would also like to turn off visual notifications, use the final option on this page.

Using Pixel Phone and Stand?

If you’re using a Pixel Stand to charge your Pixel phone, you can set it to go into DND mode anytime it is docked.

  • Open the phone’s Settings app
  • Tap “connected devices”
  • If you don’t see “Pixel Stand” under “previously connected devices,” tap “See All.”
  • Next to “Pixel Stand”, tap settings
  • Select “Do Not Disturb while docked”

Other docks and phone models may also have this feature. Check your documentation for details.

Summary

Do Not Disturb is a helpful tool if you want to configure your phone to stay quiet when you can’t be interrupted. If you’d like to learn even more about how to use Do Not Disturb on an Android phone, check out Google’s DND help page. Do you use DND on your phone? Let us know in the comments.

How to Stop Being Disturbed: Apple Edition

It’s probably happened to you at least once, it’s late and you’re just starting to fall asleep and then your phone either vibrates or chimes with some type of notification. Luckily, there are ways to easily avoid your iPhone or iPad disturbing you when you just want some peace and quiet. Android users: there will be a future post detailing how to use a similar feature on Android devices.

Apple has a built-in feature on their devices (iPhone, iPad, and Mac books) called Do Not Disturb or Focus, depending on which version of iOS or mac OS you are using. For devices running iOS 15 and later, Do Not Disturb is incorporated into the Focus app. When Do Not Disturb/Focus is active, you won’t get app notifications, texts, or calls.

Getting Started

To get started on an iPhone or iPad, go into the Settings app. Focus can be used on a schedule, or on an as-needed basis. Tap on Focus to begin.

screenshot of main focus settings

From there, you’ll see several options. If you tap on Do Not Disturb, you will get options for how you would like to use Do Not Disturb. Set up different options for general do not disturb, sleep, or when you’re at work. There is also the option to add a custom mode such as when you’re driving, working out, and more. For people who have more than one Apple device, you can share your Focus schedule across your devices. This schedule will be shared if Share Across Devices is selected.

To set up and use do not disturb on a mac, follow these helpful instructions from Apple.

Sharing Your Focus Status With Others

If your Focus Status is on and someone tries to message you, there will be a message stating that you have notifications silenced, and they will be given the option to notify you anyway, in case of an emergency. If the person messaging you taps notify anyway, you will receive a regular text notification.

screenshot of text message screen showing notify anyway

What if you don’t want to give people that option or you want to turn it off for certain contacts? MacReports has written a helpful article with instructions on how to turn off that feature or turn it off for certain contacts.

Do Not Disturb Options

Tapping on Do Not Disturb will give you various options. You can select which people or apps you would still like to receive notifications from. For those with iOS 16, you can have a different lock screen picture when Do Not Disturb is on, as well as a different set of home screen icons.

Screenshot of main do not disturb screen

Scheduling Do Not Disturb

If you’re like me and you’re a set-it-and-forget-it kind of person, you can set a schedule for when Do Not Disturb turns on each day. You can even set a different schedule for different days of the week. Simply scroll down and set up your custom do not disturb schedule.

screenshot showing example of Do Not Disturb schedule

Smart Activation is basically Apple using past device behavior to determine when you would like to activate Do Not Disturb. Diving in even deeper, you can control the behavior of certain apps when Do Not Disturb is on. For example, you can choose which messages you would like to see, select if you’d like dark mode to come on, turn on low power mode, or more.

Driving, Fitness, and More

For more information about Do Not Disturb, Sleep, and Work modes. Apple has written up a thorough set of instructions. Included in those instructions is how to set up a custom mode that can include while you’re driving, exercising, and more.

screenshot of other types of focus modes

Have you tried out Focus? Let us know in the comments!

Use This Tool to Share Videos In a Kid-Safe Way

YouTube is an excellent learning tool for people of all ages. To make it profitable for the platform and content creators, videos often contain ads, suggested content, and comments from other users that may or may not be appropriate for sensitive users. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool that could strip that all away when you share a video? There is! And it’s legal.

Introducing VideoLink

VideoLink is a free service that “cleans” the extraneous clutter from a video to provide a distraction-free viewing experience. They do have paid tiers available for advanced sharing and saving an unlimited number of links, but for most purposes, the free version is enough.

If you want the sanitized links to last for longer than an hour, you will need to create a free account to save them.

Using VideoLink

To use VideoLink, paste a YouTube link into the entry field on their home page and click “generate link.”

After a moment, the page will redirect and you will see your YouTube video embedded in a VideoLink page. But you still have options to configure.

Below the video, there is an edit tab where you can change the title or description, make it a private video, hide buttons, or add it to a VideoList (like a YouTube playlist). When you are done editing, save and preview.

If you have not already, saving a link prompts you to create an account. When I tried this from the converted video screen, I kept getting a weird message about needing to allow third-party cookies in order to log in. I had to go back to the home page to successfully create an account. You may want to create yours before pasting your first link in.

To view your saved links and lists, click on your name in the upper right corner and select the option. This is also where your account settings live.

How Would You Use This Tool?

Does this tool have a use case for you? If so, let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear how you are using it.