zerosleeps

Every once-in-a-while I’ll take a screenshot of my iPhone’s Home Screen (Apple capitalise it so I’ll do the same even though it’s stupid) and just leave it sitting in Photos. Why? Well because every time I edit my home screen to swap something out or replace a widget the whole fucking thing gets rearranged whether I like it or not. I am heavily reliant on muscle memory when stabbing at icons on my Home Screen but it’s a bit like typing - I know where the button I want should be, but if you asked me to draw the layout I would fail very badly.

So when I accidentally or otherwise rearrange my Home Screen, I refer to the last screenshot to put things back to where my brain thinks they should be.

Anyway, just for fun here’s my Home Screen right now:

I only have one page of icons: if I swipe to the right I end up in App Library. If I don’t use something regularly enough that it deserves a place on the home screen I’ll swipe down and search or use Siri Suggestions (which is surprisingly good at anticipating my needs) anyway, so maintaining other pages of icons would be a waste of time.

Dock

Is it called “Dock” on iOS? Anyway, the 4 things I reach for all the time: Messages, Fastmail, Safari, and Overcast.

Top row

Clock, because why not? I do actually use Clock when I need to see what time it is in Scotland, or the current time in UTC. Then Settings, Photos, and Camera. Camera is only really there because it’s been in that position since my first iPhone. See “muscle memory” above.

Second row

Phone, the fantastic TripView, Maps (Apple Maps is way better now than it used to be so I was happy to dump Google Maps a while ago), and WillyWeather. The last one uses data from our Bureau of Meteorology which is very accurate, compared with whatever-the-hell garbage is fed into Apple’s own Weather app.

Third row

Netflix, Macquarie, 1Password, then a folder with some “security” stuff in it: Macquarie’s Authenticator, Microsoft’s Authenticator, Duo Mobile (the last two are for work), and myGovID.

Fourth row

Genius Scan, WhatsApp, Spotify, and PCalc. I think Apple’s Notes now does the clever document scanning stuff that Genius Scan does, but Genius Scan also lets me edit, convert, and send files anywhere (e.g. to WebDAV services). I hate that I use WhatsApp as much as I do, but what’s the alternative when the people you need to contact only use it?

Fifth and sixth rows

A 2-icons-by-2-icons Things widget, then the Things icon itself. I friggin’ love Things. I paid a few bucks for it years ago and must have added tens of thousands of entries into their cloud-backed service for no additional cost ever since. I’d happily give these guys money on the regular! And to finish things off it’s Streaks, Callsheet, and Strong. I don’t think I’ll be keeping Callsheet around once my subscription expires.