Filed under: iPhone 101
iPhone 101: The home screen shortcut in 2.2
If you're like me, then you have around 7 home screens. It's annoying to flip back and forth between them to find the Apple apps, which are normally stored on the first home screen.With the introduction of the new iPhone/iPod touch 2.2 firmware, you now have the ability to jump to the first home screen with one click. No matter which screen you're on, just click the home button again. You will instantly be shuttled back to the first screen. Now you'll never have to flip again.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sumit said 8:15PM on 11-21-2008
And what if you dont like this , any way to change that?
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Britonius said 11:53PM on 11-21-2008
@Sumit: The button did not do anything previously when you pressed it while looking at the Home screen icons, so if you don't like it don't use it. I love it myself, so I can quickly get back to the 1st screen when I am done on page 7 of my apps.
Tom D said 8:31PM on 11-21-2008
Umm...why would you want to turn it off? Just don't press the home button when you're on one of your other "home" screens. This doesn't affect home button double click behaviour so I don't see why this would annoy anyone.
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LBDG said 8:40PM on 11-21-2008
I actually use the 3rd screen as the standard "home" screen with my most used apps, then scroll to the left for utilities and productivity apps or to the right for games. A total pain to get it set up this way originally, but once configured nothing is ever more than 2 screens away.
Would be great to have a setting to choose which of your screens you want to deem "home" with the button press rather than defaulting to #1.
Jinto said 2:46AM on 11-22-2008
This is true. My main page is the 2nd page. Well, I've have my phone jailbroken so I'm sure after a while they will do a hack to make this possible!
Raphael Salgado said 9:09PM on 11-21-2008
With all the good free and paid apps that have accumulated the maximum 9 pages of my iPhone 3G, I say it's high time that iPhone firmware 2.3 incorporate some folders.
How about it, Steve?
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Antonio Carlos Sil said 10:07PM on 11-21-2008
I still prefer the QuickGold App, a lot better than any other solution. A must have for jailbroken iPhones.
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Leo M. said 10:57PM on 11-21-2008
what we really need is a little app that lets you organize all your icons/apps/and such on your computer and move everything to the way you want it, and then push apply and the iPhone changes to the exact layout.
it just becomes so tedious of a job when you outgrow another screen. You have to move icons, reorganize....pain in the ass.
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Hickeroar said 11:51PM on 11-21-2008
Agreed. This is probably my biggest annoyance with the interface design. I'd prefer a scrollable list to the tedium of rearranging everything.
What would be REALLY nice is categories. Just choose the categories you want, and you have screens for that category pop up.
Britonius said 11:53PM on 11-21-2008
@Leo: That is an interesting idea, definitely much better than dragging them around to set them up and accidentally bumping an app to another screen when you did not mean to.
@Antonio: Hey, like QuickSilver for the iPhone, love that idea. Wish they could/would make it for the AppStore as I don't want to jailbreak my iPhone.
I would even like it if they could make the little dots representing each page at the bottom clickable, so you could jump to a specific page quickly or run your finger across them to scroll back and forth through the pages.
Michael Jones said 1:48AM on 11-22-2008
@Britonius:
The SDK prevents applications from launching other apps. There were some undocumented functions that allowed this, but they were removed from the SDK. So writing an app that organizes and loads your other apps is, for the moment, out of the question.
alex said 12:30AM on 11-22-2008
I'm sure most of you know this as well... but thought I would mention it in case someone didn't.
If you want to quickly navigate screens just hit the dots at the bottom, as opposed to sliding your fingers across the screen. This lets you access any page very quickly... personally this works fine for me and I welcome the new home button feature.
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Nick K. said 12:44AM on 11-22-2008
That function has been in the iPhone since the very beginning, when we first had jailbroken iPhones. It doesn't allow you to, say, tap the 4th out of 8 pages of apps and go straight to that one. All this is, is tapping near the top of the "dock," and switching from the current page to the adjacent one (in relation to which side of the screen you've tapped). Very useful in many cases, especially when I get tired of spontaneously launching applications and shuffling my apps around.
mrfletch said 12:32AM on 11-22-2008
I was just thinking about how great this feature would have been a few days ago. I'm glad they added it.
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Jash Sayani said 10:48AM on 11-22-2008
Hey Cory, I have 9 Home screens... All are full... No space for new apps.... Any way I can get more than 9 screens or remove the limit...?
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Cory Bohon said 10:00PM on 11-22-2008
9 screens is the limit. Not sure if there are tools for jailbroken iPhones as far as app management goes; that might be an option.
okto said 3:28PM on 11-23-2008
Welcome to Palm OS 3, iPhone.
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Squid7085 said 1:57AM on 11-24-2008
I was thinking about this not too long ago! It was one of those, "man, I hate having to go back 5 pages to the home page" However, I just kinda got used to it, as a minor annoyance. I ended up moving the SMS app to the dock, which really helped me out. Either way, the first two pages are really my most used apps, so this will be welcome, I have yet to get it into my arsenal of shortcuts, only after flicking to the home page do I remember the shortcut, I assume it will get there in time. :-)
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JJordanov said 1:17PM on 12-10-2008
This is so neat... I found out recently that you can move between pages just tapping on the dots below the icons. It is so annoying to swipe 5-6 times the screen... :)
Well this a much better now - at least you can go to the first page quickly.
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alphabeta2 said 1:35AM on 12-17-2008
Just jailbreak it, and go get "Categories" on Cydia! I took 9 pages of apps and got it down to 1! I just created folders for each category I wanted and those folders and the apps I need are now all right on the FIRST (and ONLY) page! The UI is slick, and very easy to maintain/change!
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