It's a living nightmare to arrange homescreen apps in iOS and iPadOS 18

[alexjholland]

I work in tech and product management.

I struggle to remember a worse product feature than homescreen app arrangement on iOS and iPadOS 18.

Like many nerds, I organise each window on my iPhone and iPad with widgets and apps to suit each workflow. And I was excited that - finally - we can move apps anywhere.

But Apple seem determined to punish us for this feature.

Whenever I drag an app around the chaos that ensues is beyond comprehension.

Apps and widgets leap around in an unhinged and macabre carnival of destruction.

There is no rhyme or reason to these movements.

They're worse than random: the homescreen never, ever guesses what I want to do.

And each time I download a new app it will blow away my previous organisation.

This isn't just bad design.

It's an anti-feature.

 

[AZFalconi]

Yea anytime you move one all the others in the row or section move. Not a fan

 

[Nodnerb]

Yeah it's absolutely awful! I'm just leaving things as they were before the update because it is such a worthless mess to try do anything with. In fact I hated moving anything around the homescreen before 18 too because it was awful, but now it is a comical nightmare. This update the only thing that actually exists that works that I want is the dark icons. Thrilling.

 

[aldo82]

I think if they tried to make it as bad as they possibly could they would struggle to make it any worse than it is! I can only assume the people who developed this never move apps as it is such a poor user experience.

 

[alexjholland]

Phew - glad to hear I'm not alone!

It's difficult to believe they haven't designed their app movement to be as upsetting as possible.

 

[chibihabibi]

Yes especially the control center. It is so erratic it could just about give someone a meltdown with how ridiculously stubborn it is.

 

[TonyC28]

I don’t want to believe that they did this on purpose. So, I’ll ask, how is it possible they made it this bad? With all the beta testing that happens, could this possibly have been missed?

 

[contacos]

The worst is when you try to move an appto to the bottom right (not the dock), suddenly it throws stuff on another page

 

[dottdirtt]

it's just so random. sometimes moving an icon causes all the other icons on the page or row to move sometimes they don't. even beyond having beta testing surely someone involved has at some point in the last ten years wondered, hey how does this work in android. the android way just makes the most logical sense. any icon can go anywhere and nothing else moves when you move an icon! so easy. also they don't wiggle annoyingly.

 

[aldo82]

I’d love to see Tim Cook do a live demo of rearranging the icons on the screen! But they don’t do anything live anymore, it’s all pre recorded.

I really like how you can change a widget size directly now even between icon and widget but oh boy it makes such a mess of the Home Screen it’s not an easy decision to make to try a different layout!

 

[decafjava]

The worst is when you try to move an appto to the bottom right (not the dock), suddenly it throws stuff on another page

Glad I'm not the only one. Argggghh.

 

[3Rock]

For me, I just leave my icons/wingets the way they were. I don’t care about moving them around like others do.

 

[ZombiePete]

Yes bro, it is embarrassingly bad. I tried to move the apps on my iPad's home screen to the bottom of the screen and it kept moving everything around; I ended up have to delete all the widgets I had, arrange the icons, and then re-add the widgets to get it close to what I wanted. It is bad to the point that it should not have been released like this, let alone as a defining feature for iOS 18.

For me, I just leave my icons/wingets the way they were. I don’t care about moving them around like others do.

Thanks for participating, but I don't think this thread is for you.

 

[tomtattoo]

It is not so hard if you understand there is underlying grid of 4x4.
Move a small widget around and see that 4 icons are moving too.

 

[sparky672]

If I arrange the screen with gaps, new downloaded apps fill the next available gap. Fine... kinda expected. But then if you decide to delete the last app, the icons you've previously arranged suddenly automatically re-arrange themselves to fill in the new gap you created by deleting the app. Not expected or desired at all.

If we're given the ability to put an icon anywhere in the grid, the expectation is for that icon to simply stay in that grid position regardless of what is happening elsewhere on the page. Otherwise, I'm not seeing the point of this feature that allows me custom grid locations while an "automatic" routine simultaneously over rides my layout.

 

[ArchEtech]

If I arrange the screen with gaps, new downloaded apps fill the next available gap. Fine... kinda expected. But then if you decide to delete the last app, the icons you've previously arranged suddenly automatically re-arrange themselves to fill in the new gap you created by deleting the app. Not expected or desired at all.

If we're given the ability to put an icon anywhere in the grid, the expectation is for that icon to simply stay in that grid position regardless of what is happening elsewhere on the page. Otherwise, I'm not seeing the point of this feature that allows me custom grid locations while an "automatic" routine simultaneously over rides my layout.

Ya I don't really see how anything is really customizable in any usable way. Just give me the ability to have more icons and a denser grid and I would be good. It would be nice to just have them moveable without a grid at all, but my guess is that would take more ram or something. I also miss the animated wallpapers. I wouldn't mind the option to lose a little batter life to have that feature.

 

[sparky672]

When I first tried this feature out, half the jiggling icons refused to respond to my finger and would not move at all. I knew I was doing it right because I could move certain icons just fine. Others just remained stuck and jiggling in place.

With an iPhone 15 Pro, I am hardly an edge case. Truly makes one wonder what kind of beta testing is being done here.

 

[jonnyb098]

Good MOARRRRNAAAAANG!!! Introducing iOS 19….our biggest release ever. Now easier than ever to move icons around. We think you’re gonna love it!

 

[ozreth]

Experienced this yesterday and finally gave up. I got apps all over the screen now with just as many gaps.

 

[Wizec]

I think it was their first iteration of AI, purposely set to “insanity” mode. Next came “AutoCorrect” 😜

What’s really fun is trying to drop something into a folder on tvOS but that folder is in the dock bar at the top. It’s like Whack-A-Mole

 

[ifxf]

I think it was their first iteration of AI, purposely set to “insanity” mode. Next came “AutoCorrect” 😜

What’s really fun is trying to drop something into a folder on tvOS but that folder is in the dock bar at the top. It’s like Whack-A-Mole

How is any AI involved except marketing insisting that any new feature include the term AI.

 

[DomC]

This is what I would expect from a beta release. Maybe they put too many engineers on the intelligence stuff?

 

[HouseLannister]

It was worse in the first couple 18.0 betas. But they quickly said "good enough" and moved on. Springboard/Spotlight/App Library need a lot of work. Hoping iOS 19 or 20 does a complete rework of app layout and organization. I want to rename apps, pick any icon for apps, make folders scale to custom/different sizes when opened, decrease the icon size and increase the density of icons (rows/columns), hide apps without disabling them (try hiding your ad blocker and watch all the ads come back), organize the App Library into custom categories I chose, change App Library to be list view by default, and I would also like a list view like watchOS for the homescreen layout as an option (something like Niagra on Android).

 

[DomC]

I wish we didn't have to wait a year between fixes for certain things which should be addressed before new features are worked on.

 

[tomtattoo]

...... I want to rename apps,

Yes..the ones with long names or worse with ... at the end.

pick any icon for apps

That would be really nice.

decrease the icon size and increase the density of icons (rows/columns)

We could do this years ago with JB.

organize the App Library into custom categories I chose

Will not happen and is not the approach.
Either everything is automatic or you can make your own folders.
Instead they should put a lot of pressure on the developers to name the correct category.
Or atleast name a category. I have e.g. three game apps in the OTHER folder, not in GAMES.
Even Apple Journal app is in OTHER. That is ridicolous.