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iOS/iPadOS Home Bar line - poll

What do you think of the Home Bar line at the bottom of the iOS/iPadOS?

  • I love it / It helps me navigate - Please keep it

  • I don’t mind it / I hardly ever notice it - Meh, whatever

  • I hate it / It is visually distracting - Please give us a accessibility choice to remove it

Results are only viewable after voting.
Tobyfish

Tobyfish

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 26, 2017
17
7
Hi All,

I don’t see a lot of chatter/complaints in here on the Home Bar line at the bottom of screen on devices without a home button, so maybe I am in the minority here.

I am definitely not a fan and I actually ended up returning a iPad Pro just because of the visual displeasure it gave me. On my iPhone 11 I notice the line less because it is typically held vertically and so the line is smaller in proportion to height of the screen. However, on an iPad which I typically use horizontally it is a constant eye sore, especially on a dark background where the line becomes a very flashy white. So I ended sticking with a good old iPad with bezels where the gestures are the same, but no distracting line at the bottom.

I have sent my feedback to Apple, however, I just wanted to know if I am the only one with this issue. So please let me know in the poll / comments what you think of the Home Bar line.
 
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I guarantee you that you are in the minority. They will never remove it, and in my opinion you are wasting your time.

I genuinely don’t know how it’s an inconvenience to anybody, but for your sake, I hope you get used to it because at some point you will not be able to buy an iPad with a home button
 
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I agree I hate it I always have I know how to use my phone it’s ugly and we don’t need it, we should have option to remove it, it ruins the display for me
 
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The perma-turd as Chris Pirillo called it if I recall correctly. It's very annoying, at the very least give the option to turn it off. Never enough options.
 
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I’ve been using a iPhone without a home button since Apple released it and I don’t even notice the bar, that goes for the notch too.. I can’t wait to replace my Air2 after it loses support to get an iPad without a home button so I can get rid of TouchID forever..
 
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LOL, if Apple added an option for everything some crybaby complained about then iOS and iPadOS would take 200GB just to load! How often do you sit and stare at the Home screens on your iPad? Most of us actually run apps, so that line won’t be much of an issue to us.
 
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w5jck said:
LOL, if Apple added an option for everything some crybaby complained about then iOS and iPadOS would take 200GB just to load! How often do you sit and stare at the Home screens on your iPad? Most of us actually run apps, so that line won’t be much of an issue to us.
Click to expand...
The bar appears in apps as well... Some apps are poorly written for the Pro and elements are obscured by the presence of it. And the claim that a single menu with a bunch of on/off labels for basic UI/UX features would not take 200GB at all. Completely dishonest. It would surprise me if such a thing took more than 50MB if it's merely UI/UX based problems.
 
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StumpyBloke said:
I guarantee you that you are in the minority. They will never remove it, and in my opinion you are wasting your time.

I genuinely don’t know how it’s an inconvenience to anybody, but for your sake, I hope you get used to it because at some point you will not be able to buy an iPad with a home button
Click to expand...
Here’s the thing, most of the time it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just whatever. BUT the only thing that bugged me was reading in the Kindle app on dark mode with this bright ass white bar stuck at the bottom. I just went into the app and I see that it automatically disappears now, so not really a problem for me anymore. But I can see how that would annoy some people if it didn’t go away and stayed stuck there in whatever app. (I also checked Apple Books, the other app I had issues with, and the bar now fades away. Not sure when any of this happened because I haven’t read on my phone in quite some time.)
 
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NBKindaGirl said:
Here’s the thing, most of the time it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just whatever. BUT the only thing that bugged me was reading in the Kindle app on dark mode with this bright ass white bar stuck at the bottom. I just went into the app and I see that it automatically disappears now, so not really a problem for me anymore. But I can see how that would annoy some people if it didn’t go away and stayed stuck there in whatever app. (I also checked Apple Books, the other app I had issues with, and the bar now fades away. Not sure when any of this happened because I haven’t read on my phone in quite some time.)
Click to expand...

This is exactly the use case I am annoyed by; I am reading articles in the Economist app in dark mode and the bar will slowly fade away, only to pop right back in with a shining glare whenever I scroll or touch the screen. Now, if it had been there all the time you might develop a certain blindness to it over time, but because it pops in and out, it takes away your attention from where you were on the page (like someone waving at you in your peripheral). Same goes for fast forwarding in YouTube videos, surfing in safari etc.

The thing is, the line need not be there. It serves absolutely no purpose but to distract me (which I know is not the intention, and may be a personal OCD). But It is not like I don’t know I can scroll up from the bottom or I am helplessly looking for somewhere to touch/press. And most likely with all the AI and ML, the OS knows this too. I don’t need support in form of a visual line (not withstanding whether it is distractive or not) - it is superfluous, so please don’t serve it up.

So that is why coming from an older iPad is such a stark contrast in the user experience. I already know and use all the same gestures today, without the help of a line. So, it is exactly the same use case scenario but just with a much worse user experience result in form a recurrent (and needless) pop-in distraction (that I did not have before).

To be honest, I think this is mostly an issue for devices used for content consumption. I hardly ever notice it on my iPhone, but it screams to me on the iPad (that I mostly use for surfing, reading and movies). I guess use cases for iPads are pretty evenly split between consumption and creation, which could explain whether people are districated by the line or not.

Look, I get that this is not the end of the world, and pretty much a first world problem existing inside my (and a few other’s) head. However, Apple has always been about the little things that add up to a collectively great user experience. Heck, if the company can spend resources on tilting the Apple boot logo 90 degrees in the new 14.5 iPadOS (as if that ever mattered to anyone), you might think they would have a spare engineer or two, to code a simple on/off switch for the menu line.
 
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Honestly I’ve never liked it and it would make the screen like so much nicer without it why do we need it
 
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I have a security cam app and I can’t drag the slider with my finger when playing back videos because it switches to the previous app! I have to carefully pinpoint my Pencil.
 
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retta283 said:
The perma-turd as Chris Pirillo called it if I recall correctly. It's very annoying, at the very least give the option to turn it off. Never enough options.
Click to expand...
He referred to the notch as that, not the home bar. Pretty close though. 🤣

While it doesn’t annoy me personally, I’d definitely appreciate the ability to turn it off if I could.

It may be pointless to us techies, but when I handed my parents (both using a 6s) my Xs Max to try out, they were both confused on how to get back to the Home Screen until I told them about the home bar. So it definitely has its purpose. But once you learn the UI, it feels quite pointless.
 
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