Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad mini App icons are too small on iPad mini with iPadOS

Whole point of the mini for me is that it should deliver the complete ipad experience in a small package. Start limiting number of columns or rows and it will divert from being an ipad and instead become more of an iphone.

I would absolutely accept it as an optional setting though.
 
I dunno, at least to me the icons on the Mini 5 seem fine on iPadOS. They’re no smaller than the ones on the iPhone, and I’ve been mashing my fingers at those for years without too much issue.

I like having a denser home screen now. Adding the side column of widgets and increasing the amount of icons on-screen goes a long way. For too long the home screen on iPads had a weirdly sparse look with way too much empty space between a scattering of app icons.

Wokis said:
Whole point of the mini for me is that it should deliver the complete ipad experience in a small package. Start limiting number of columns or rows and it will divert from being an ipad and instead become more of an iphone.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I’ve noticed a recurring attitude at times that Apple should deliberately limit the capabilities of the Mini or deliberately leave features out from the Mini just because it’s smaller. I heard people say they shouldn’t bother implementing Split View on the Mini, but they did any way, and it works great. I heard people say they shouldn’t bother adding Pencil support to the Mini, but they did anyway, and it works great.

I’m glad that so far Apple isn’t treating the iPadOS experience on the Mini as a lesser experience, and I’m not sure why people would want for them to.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Breezygirl
Is it mandatory to have 6 columns? Can you not simply have 4 as it has always been, therefore allowing more space for normal sized icons? I'm not running the beta.
 
I don't even know how I'm going to like this on my 12.9 - one nice thing about having only 20 icons per page is it's easy to quickly scan for an app if it's less used and you can't remember exactly which page it's on. With 30 it's that much busier. I will reserve judgement until I have actually used it though, I guess there's always spotlight to save looking at all!
 
To anyone running the beta: can you tell me if you're forced into having 6 columns? Can't you simply arrange apps into 4 columns, thus allowing more space for the icons to be normally sized?
Is there any new option under accessibility settings to deal with this?
 
Lost Heaven said:
To anyone running the beta: can you tell me if you're forced into having 6 columns? Can't you simply arrange apps into 4 columns, thus allowing more space for the icons to be normally sized?
Is there any new option under accessibility settings to deal with this?
Click to expand...

I don’t see any settings to change it, accessibility just seems to have a larger text size option.

The six icons actually looks great, at least on the 11”.
 
The 6 column layout also stays the same now when switching portrait to landscape. I’m not a fan of the current ‘5 column landscape’ vs ‘4 column portrait’ setup that shifts icons around the screen.
 
David58117 said:
I don’t see any settings to change it, accessibility just seems to have a larger text size option.”.
Click to expand...

Thank you; that's what I feared.

This is starting to make me feel anxious by anticipation to the point that it makes me feel queasy whenever I see footage of the new home screen on the Mini. This reminds me of the home screen of the Apple Watch when it was first released and of how hard it was just to tap an app icon until they changed it to the current setup.
I suppose, very worst case scenario, one could update to iPadOS, wait for a jailbreak to be available, and then hope for a tweak that enlarges the size of the icons or allows you to reduce the number of rows, although this would be something I'd really like to avoid.
 
Glad they've walked back on this, I still think I'll prefer 20 icons/page rather than 30, though I will give it a try. Nice to be able to choose.
 
Lost Heaven said:
Many thanks for letting me know; this is a HUGE relief.

Can anyone running the beta on the Mini post a screenshot of how the homescreen looks now on landscape with the bigger icons?
Click to expand...
i do not have a mini, but on the pro it looks exactly like it did on iOS12.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lost Heaven
Don’t have mini but this is my iPad Pro 11 . Widgets don’t stay on home screen anymore either . They seem a just a touch bigger , noticeable icons in folders.


506b3f0c4dae10bfb95e28484af19f45.jpg
e90a4727c2ef007cc8cf3a032b7c0b20.jpg
b629d850463fe04518f28676e45c4711.jpg
 
mastaofdacat said:
Don’t have mini but this is my iPad Pro 11 . Widgets don’t stay on home screen anymore either . They seem a just a touch bigger , noticeable icons in folders.
Click to expand...

So, essentially, with bigger icons activated, the homescreen works as it did up until iOS 12 (like @canesalato said and I only read after posting this). I take it, on landscape orientation, you have to manually slide the widgets from the left like you do on portrait, right? That's a very fair compromise for the bigger icons.
 
Lost Heaven said:
So, essentially, with bigger icons activated, the homescreen works as it did up until iOS 12 (like @canesalato said and I only read after posting this). I take it, on landscape orientation, you have to manually slide the widgets from the left like you do on portrait, right? That's a very fair compromise for the bigger icons.
Click to expand...

I just tested it and, yes.

I'm likely going to go with the smaller icons on my regular ipads at home and work and larger icons (foregoing the pinned widgets) on my ipad mini
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back