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Organizing Apps

D

djr7572

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 29, 2011
479
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It's been 11 years since the first iPhone and there's still no option in iOS to auto-alphabetize the apps on the home screen(s)? Didn't Android figure this out a decade ago? Unless I'm missing something obvious, I don't think this has ever been a part of iOS. Do you think it's because there's no "app drawer" in iOS? Could that have something to do with it? Obviously Android and iOS are two completely different things - that's obvious - but you'd think having the ability to auto-alphabetize your apps would be something so basic! I suppose if Apple wanted to make that a feature, they would've done it a long time ago. There must be some reason they either can't or won't make it a feature of iOS. I've asked several employees at my local Apple Store about this and I get a blank stare - like I'm from another planet.

This has always been one of my biggest frustrations with iOS - trying to figure out how to organize/sort my apps.
 
I think if you reset your home screen in settings that should basically do that, at least on home screens after the first one.
 
Reddit has a subarea for people to post their iPhone layouts (sadly a lot are of jailbreak phones so if you don't JB, you have to weed through them).
 
The demand for this is likely microscopic as people recognize apps by icon and would prefer to organize them by frequency of use or importance, which would explain the blank stares you get.

That said, dragging and dropping is a tedious way of organizing apps how you want them.
 
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djr7572 said:
I don't think this has ever been a part of iOS.
[...]
but you'd think having the ability to auto-alphabetize your apps would be something so basic!
[...]
I've asked several employees at my local Apple Store about this and I get a blank stare - like I'm from another planet.
Click to expand...

Never been part of the OS.

The problem is not basic. What happens when someone accidentally toggles on the option and messes up their well arranged (in their mind) layout? And what do you do with app folders: do you do something like file navigators where you can sort by types, folder first, or have folders mingle in between apps? The "Sort by" paradigm is something for desktop, imo, in that you do have the window where you can click on a title and have things sort by name/date/type, ascending, descending. And can be "customized" on a per-directory basis, and reset to some acceptable default state.

As az431 said, most people arrange their apps by importance, frequency. Add in Spotlight search, can track down an app without having to scroll through every page.

As to blank stare, really? Surprised that the bottom of Apple's org chart did not get the memo from Jony, Design Team, and or Engineering on the design decisions made over the years?
 
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I would just like iOS to automatically organise my app icons by frequency of use.
 
I would like for the ability to save app layouts.

For example, maybe I want to try out a new way of organising my apps (say moving all my iPad apps to the dock). If a few days later, I find that it isn’t working out for me, I could then quickly revert back to my previous app layout at the tap of a button, rather than have to manually drag every app back to where they were.
 
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