My 2020 phone home screen

My annual review of the apps I love, and the ones that have fallen off…

Following up from my recent post, The Tools I Use to Manage My World, I thought I’d share what’s on my phone’s (Google Pixel 4 XL) home screen. Because as we know, the apps on your home screen are the ones you use over 90% of the time*.

So let’s see, first we can start with the ever-present Google search bar at the bottom. This comes standard with the Pixel and at first I wasn’t a fan, but now I completely need it there. Also, if you click on the little bubbles in the bottom right, it fires up Google Assistant, which is probably the main reason I can’t switch to an iPhone — it’s just that much better than Siri.

Next is the bottom tray of apps. These are my “musts”. The Phone app, which, do I really need that? I guess so, but I make so few calls and most of the time when I do I don’t click the app, I just say, “Ok, Google, call so-and-so.”

Google Messages, Google Calendar, Gmail, and Slack make up the rest of the bottom tray. Notice a theme? Yep, I’m all in on Google. Slack is what my companies use to communicate, and you know about the rest. And since I gave Google a call-out for how much better Google Assistant is than Siri, I’ll also say that Apple’s iMessage is SO much better than Google Messages. So…