My iOS 14 Home Screen Setup
How I make use of widgets and App Library
At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced that iOS 14 would be seeing some major changes compared to iOS 13. The previously quite limited options for customizing the home screen was swapped for the introduction of a new style of widgets and the App Library.
Widgets are no longer limited to the left of the home screen, and can now be dragged onto the home screen to create a more dynamic and information-rich landing page.
The selection of widgets that are available today is limited to a few Apple apps due to iOS 14 still being in developer beta, but I’m excited to see how third-party apps will design widgets of their own.
My home screen
I want my landing page to be as useful and intuitive as possible. This means only displaying my most used apps and the information that’s most important to me. I’ve chosen a completely black background, as I find having any other image to be distracting.
At the top, I’ve added the Siri Suggestions widget, which continuously updates to give me a selection of 8 of my most recently and frequently used apps. The addition of the Siri Suggestions widget makes my home screen a bit more dynamic.
The Siri Suggestions widget will only give you app suggestions if you have it in the stretched out form (as opposed to square). In coming updates, I would like to see the option to have app suggestions in square form.
On the left, I’ve placed the battery widget in square format. I like having the battery widget on my home screen since I often use my AirPods Pro and want to know the battery status on both the AirPods Pro and their case. I also prefer seeing my iPhone’s battery status as shown in the widget, as opposed to the icon in the top right corner.
As for the rest of my home screen, I’ve had to be very selective as there are only 12 spots left for my most used apps. I would’ve liked to see one more row (maybe by making the Siri Suggestions widget smaller?) for my apps.
From top to bottom, my most-used apps are Phone, Facebook Messenger, Fantastical, Länsförsäkrinar (my local bank), Google Maps, Things, Clock, Gmail, Photos, Settings, YouTube, and Apple Notes. I keep Safari, Spotify, Pocket Casts, and iMessage in the dock. I’ve reviewed some of the above-mentioned apps in this article!
App Library
Another feature that Apple introduced in iOS 14 is App Library. It acts as a place to store all your apps that aren’t on your home screen. I used to have a page to the right of my home screen with folders for all my non-essential apps, but ever since I installed the iOS 14 developer beta I’ve completely switched over to App Library.
App Library looks like a collection of folders for all the app categories. They show the 3 most recently used apps (clickable from App Library), and then a folder-in-folder view of all the other apps in that category. If you tap the little folder view, you get a list displaying each app in that category. There’s a search bar at the top if you prefer searching for apps manually.
App Library automatically sorts all the apps into categories, so if you’re planning on using App Library, you should go through each category to see which apps fit where, as you might’ve used a different sorting system before.
After using App Library for about a week I can confidently say that it’s far superior to keeping all apps in folders on a separate page. I hid my folder page (by edit home screen → tap dots at the bottom → uncheck the page you don’t want to see) and now keep App Library directly to the right of my home screen.
I hope you enjoyed this article about my iOS 14 home screen setup. If you did, please consider taking a second to give it a few claps, as it will help more people discover the article. If you have any suggestions for home screen setups of your own, please comment below!
