Re-thinking the iPhone's home screen
The iPhone's home screen works just fine with 16 application icons on the main screen and four more on the dock at the bottom. It still works well with another screenful of 16 more apps on the adjacent screen. But, says Chris Devers, as you start adding more apps, the home screen UI doesn't scale well to cope with them. Flicking across five screens of apps to find the one you want is time-consuming. And moving an app from screen five to screen three is chaotic, unless you've left "gaps" on each screen as you went along - in which case you'd have six to juggle, not five. And even then, it's still chaotic.
OK, so not everyone is going to be collecting that many third party apps. But for people who do, says Chris, there needs to be a better solution than this. He's posted a set on Flickr to illustrate his point.
What might work? A Quicksilver- or Spotlight-style app, where you type some characters from the name of the app you want and it gets launched? Or a gesture launcher, where you "draw" what you're looking for?
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Philster said 4:39PM on 7-21-2008
I had a utility on my jailbroken 1st gen iPhone that simulated folders on the home screen. I had a folder for games, one for utilities, etc.
Worked like a charm (mostly).
Reply
Zsoldier said 4:43PM on 7-21-2008
Completely Agree. Would be nice if I could "Group" or place into folder 'like' applications.
Chris (Sunnyboi14) said 4:44PM on 7-21-2008
Yeah. Categories. That would be a bad alternative to me, because it requires even more springboards. Plus, its ugly.
Zsoldier said 4:44PM on 7-21-2008
Completely Agree. Would be nice if I could "Group" or place into folder 'like' applications.
pat said 9:45PM on 7-21-2008
Use the Dock to move the apps. Place an App in the dock then go to the screen you want to place the app there.
Steve M said 6:12PM on 7-21-2008
Palm used to have some nice tabbed menu interfaces like Launch'em. I have nearly all 5 screens full and it is getting to be a royal pain flicking thru them. I will get rid of some of my tryout apps over time, but they are sure to be replaced. If I could group them perhaps into news, fun, finance, etc that would be great.
Steve M said 2:02PM on 7-22-2008
Need a desktop application to help organize the screens because pressing each icon and waiting for it to jiggle then moving 80 icons around 5 screens until you have it just the way you want is unworkable. I would rather set my screen layout on the desktop then sync to the Iphone.
Miguel said 4:40PM on 7-21-2008
I completely agree!
Reply
punkassjim said 5:46PM on 7-21-2008
While I see how things can get out of hand, I can also see that Chris has kind of inflated his setup to make his point. Like, who the hell needs a French, Spanish, German, Mandarin and Italian language reference with them everywhere they go? I mean, if you were heading out on a pan-European trip, I'd imagine that yeah, you might need all but the Mandarin. But perhaps you could pare-down and leave a few of your 67 games at home (or on your laptop back at the hotel) while you're on your trip.
I'm just sayin'.
Apple's trying to keep the UI simple, and I think they've hit a sweet-spot. Now, it's up to us users to figure out a sweet-spot that will keep us productive with the damned device.
Chris Devers said 4:45PM on 7-21-2008
I really think iTunes / Contact is the way out here, not necessarily search.
The Contact app (or the Phone interface to the same functionality) lets you define a scrollable list of favorites. You just flick up or down to find the one you need right now. It also lets you see what items were accessed recently, and the general browser lets you look either in one big flat list, or within any groups you've defined. This works well & needs little explanation for most people.
The iTunes app lets you browse in any of a handful of predefined ways (by genre, artist, album, song, etc), plus you can define playlists to impose whatever other organization you'd prefer. Again, this works well & doesn't need much explaining.
Either of those, with only minimal tweaking, would be a massive improvement over how the current Springboard approach handles having more than a couple of screens worth of apps to manage.
I think anything Quicksilver / Spotlight based, where you have to type what you want, would be overkill, at least for me. As a feature of a broader overhaul, sure I can see it appealing to some people. But I rarely find myself having to "search" for things in the iTunes app -- I just browse to what I was looking for -- and I can't picture myself using such an approach for my apps, either.
The bigger point through is that we need something better than Springboard, which was a great iPhone v1 approach that no longer scales well with iPhone v2.
Reply
Jacob Deane said 4:47PM on 7-21-2008
I agree with the folders
A way of using coverflow to flick through icons would work well - maybe this could be used in conjunction with folders!
Reply
Ryan said 4:47PM on 7-21-2008
you dont have to flick across all the screens. If you press one of the little circles at the bottom of the screen that designates what page youre on, it will automatically take you to the corresponding page. So, if youre on page one (circle one) and you press circle "5" it will take you right to that page. Not perfect, but much better than flicking.
Reply
Jeremy said 4:54PM on 7-21-2008
Yes. This works well if you sanction your "home screens" off into separate categories. Page 1 is the deafault factory config, Page 2 I have as Games, Page 3 for Utilites, etc...
Then I just tap the circle of the page I want... and boom!
Not sure what I'll do when I get more apps than what fill a page?
ramond said 4:55PM on 7-21-2008
exactly the reason I was confused about this article.
Chris Devers said 5:09PM on 7-21-2008
Okay, but the related problem is trying to remember what applications are on which screen.
And this problem is exacerbated by the fact that icons tend to move around as you download new ones, delete old ones, and install updates.
If the average person can remember 7±2 things (or maybe even less), then trying to keep track of dozens of icons across multiple screens is not reasonable.
FishGuy said 5:17PM on 7-21-2008
Is this true? It does not work for me. I tap the far right dot when I'm on the home screen and it just slides one page over. I have to tap 5 times to get to the 5th screen then 5 taps back. Tapping all over the bottom and no difference in function, always just a single page slide.
Aelver said 5:50PM on 7-21-2008
^ Same for me too. No boom :(
CaptSaltyJack said 5:50PM on 7-21-2008
Sorry, not how it works.. the dots do not let you jump more than one page left/right.
Jeff said 5:24PM on 7-21-2008
I mostly agree :)
What I want to see is "stacks" like what leopard has, specifically the "grid" view. Essentially it would be a "folder" that opens when you click on it, and closes automaticalyl when you select something.
I think this can be done in a very "apple-style" and greatly improve the functionality of the home screen / launcher.
Ideally I would have "grids" or "stacks" for Games, Media, PIM/Productivity, Utilities... one for URLs and what would be really nice is to put a contact on my homescreen or in a stack/grid... so I can tap a homescreen icon to call a specific person, basically intermingling favorites with apps and homescreen urls.
Reply
tj said 10:43PM on 7-21-2008
There was a "Stacks" app on the 1st gen jailbroken iPhones ... it didn't work very well though. However, implemented correctly, this would be perfect! Combined with "Categories" ... you'd be set!