iPad Homescreen app icons take up the same space as small widgets (iPadOS 15 beta 3)

It seems that to accommodate widgets on the homescreen, Apple’s removed the ability to make homescreen app icons dense. As a result, apps seem to be given the same space as small widgets. It looks a little silly:

I find it funny how difficult iOS/iPadOS homescreen design has been for Apple. Android has long been superior on this front, and while recent iOS updates have narrowed the gap, it’s still quite a vast gap.

I hope that iOS’s increasing customizability is somewhat contributing to the iPhone’s recently-growing market share, and in turn, we’ll see Apple continue to flex on what users are allowed to do with their phones. We don’t need your paternalistic insistence on symmetry, Apple! Let us make things you think are ugly!

edit: now with a working image, because my iCloud Photos hack was a lie

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have you reported this as a “bug”?

I considered submitting it in Feedback, but I haven’t yet. I’m not sure “let me do anything I want with my home screen” is valuable feedback, heh. If I find a way to communicate this as a concise issue, though, I will.

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FWIW, developer beta 5 introduced a setting to make the icons bigger:

And also on pages without any widgets 6x5 icons are displayed instead now of the 6x4 with widgets (in landscape). One more row!

Yet it still feels that the entire HomeScreen situation needs a do-over. iPadOS suffers from legacy decisions made for the iPhone, due to its restricted size and both systems and especially widgets suffer from the various grid sizes/resolutions that need to be supported, due to having devices with all the different screen sizes and aspect ratios for both iPads and iPhones.

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Looks like others are also frustrated by iPadOS 15’s treatment of the home screen:

Yes. I’d rather have options to set the app icon size and grid spacing, and cram the icons all together butting up against each other, if I want.

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