I was playing around with the various “minimal launcher” homescreen setups, and I just wasn’t happy with any of them. What I was looking for is:
- Not “no notification badges,” but limited to a few apps - and ideally not scattered everywhere.
- Easy access to the stuff I use all the time.
- Reduction in the amount of colors and visual distraction.
This is what I wound up with. Using an app called “Launcher,” I made two launcher areas. The top one is the audiobook/podcast stuff I use daily, web browser, mail, and calendar. The lower one with “Call,” “Go,” and “Memo” activates two submenus (“Call” and “Go”), or WhisperMemos (“Memo”). I’ve preconfigured the “Call” and “Go” submenus to pop up the half-dozen people I call most often, and the half-dozen places I go most often, respectively.
For the apps in those launcher areas, Launcher handles the coloring of the icons. For the apps in the dock, I’m using Shortcuts to create single-app launchers. The dock apps are (left to right) phone, messages, Slack, and a custom group.
The custom group needs some explanation. That’s an app group which houses the apps where I legitimately want badge counts. I created nine four-square icons that basically don’t do anything, just for visual purposes, which takes up the first screen of the group. There’s a second screen of apps in that group, and THAT screen is where all the “badge count” apps live.
So what I get is a clean, minimal home screen, and one red badge notification when I’ve missed a call, etc.
Don’t know if this is helpful to anybody, but just wanted to share. This probably took me a couple of hours on a weekend to get all set up, but I’m pretty happy with it. And since the two widget areas fill the home screen, I don’t have to worry about new apps landing anywhere and messing with the visual.
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