555: iOS 14 Extravaganza

You could hide your manually organized apps by doing these steps outlined by Apple Support

Try this https://youtu.be/I9PuaMDDAv8

Good suggestion. But not what I wanna do. I guess Iā€™ll have to delete them, but not delete them. Whatever Apple calls that processā€¦

Iā€™m still in the process of transitioning my home screen. Iā€™m thinking I might do a whole Home Screen purge to just take everything off of it, then put back what I want. I already used search for 90% of the apps, the other ones were opened via muscle memory, so the App Library is perfect for me, and Iā€™ll short circuit my muscle memory with the purge. Excited to see what I end up with.

But one thing that I looked for immediately when iOS 14 was on my phone was whether I could use shortcuts to toggle Siriā€™s new ā€œannounce messagesā€ feature. Itā€™s something I want when I physically cannot touch my phone (ex driving, cooking, gardening). But thereā€™s no shortcuts option for it yet, so I either have to toggle it manually from control center or live with always on/off. I donā€™t want to add it to my control center, but I probably will for now. Itā€™s also odd that it only announces when connected to certain types of headphones. My car is still operating with a physical aux connection, so I wouldnā€™t be able to use the feature to its full potential yet.

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Itā€™s interesting how confusing it is for me to have my home screen messed up. I too search for a lot of apps, but not having those available that I usually have on my first screen is much more irritating than I expected.

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Does anyone know if Dark Sky has been incorporated into the weather app yet? Cause there app is still working so far for me. Curious when that will stop.

Today I found I like having a relatively widget free first home screen, and then put widgets on the second screen.

I donā€™t need to have the weather staring at me every time I open my phone, but when Iā€™m looking for the weather forecast, I slide over one screen and there it is.

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Or put in a Smart Stack

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Okay, I put all apps in the library, I have only widgets left on my home screens. I have four apps left in my dock but Iā€™m not sure which ones really belong there (because some that used to be in the dock are now represented by widgets).
It feels very awkward. I realize that I relied on counters on the app Icons more than I thought. I donā€™t really use the library yet, I go via search. I find it confusing that the library shows me little icons in the preview but changes the order when I open the folder (if not selecting one of the big icons).
Iā€™ll give it a try but Iā€™m not sold yet.

@Robert You might want to consider adding the Siri Suggestions widget to the home screen. Iā€™m finding it to be very good and you can selectively tell Siri what apps not to suggest so it gets better. I just told Siri not to suggest Reminders (I use OF) and not to suggest Calendar (The fantastic widgets from Fantastical converted me to Fantastical despite my distaste for subscriptions).

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Thatā€™s neat, I didnā€™t know you could teach it! I make use of the suggestions, but I get them by opening search. Iā€™ll check if you can also teach it there. Otherwise Iā€™ll add this to my smart stack.

Hey, you canā€˜t add them to the stack, whyā€™s that!

That is a Siri Suggestion stack so you canā€™t add directly. But my understanding, but Iā€™ve not tried it, is that you can go into settings to adjust the suggestions.

Iā€™ve found that it surfaces, and is getting better at doing so, the apps I want. I liken it to a ā€œliving home screen.ā€

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So I added all my apps to the App Library from my own folders and Iā€™m not going back. Macsparky is always right.

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Iā€˜m still feeling a little blindfolded, but I might get used to it. Most apps I find by search and they get suggested anyway. What I miss are the few apps where I had badges on (like messengers). I get the notifications anyway, but Iā€™m used to have a second layer telling me if thereā€™s a message that I maybe ignored when it came in.
Another thing is new apps that I maybe installed ā€žon the goā€œ and didnā€™t try out immediately. Usually they would sit on the last home screen, waiting to get either sorted into a folder or deleted. Someday I would get to them. Now they might just get buried in the library.

New apps go into the library folder ā€œRecently Added). On my phone that folder is the top right folder in the App Library.

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I have badges for nothing. I turned them ALL off about 5 years ago. Adds nothing but stress to my life. But I do agree on the blindfoldedness, I do feel now that I have lost a bit of oversight over which apps I actually have on my iPhone

Thatā€™s one way to find yourself in the App Library ā€¦ iOS bug. :slight_smile:

Since the phone uninstalls the unused apps to save space, I have no problem losing track of wich apps I have.
The ones that I donā€™t use are at best distractions for the most in my view.