For me, the biggest downside for the new paradigm of widgets and the App Library, is that App Notification badges have become less useful.
Before we could remove apps from our home screens while retaining the apps on the device, I kept my iPhone and iPad pretty lean (55 apps was the most I had on my iPhone). All of my apps were on 1 screen using folders.
But now with Apple Wallet and various other things going on I have 123 apps and only have a handful of app icons on a Home Screen, searching for any other app when I need them.
But this means that those apps which don’t use notifications, but do have a notification badge are not prominent when they “need” attention.
I wish there were a way (other than manually putting all my apps in a folder) to easily see this without having to scroll across to the App Library.
The obvious option would be to allow the App Library on the iPhone dock and allow an indicator when apps are badged.
To be honest, I turn off most app badges for the simple reason that I don’t want all those red indicators on my screen crying out for attention.
I only keep the apps that I regularly use on my Home Screen these days, with less-used and utility apps in the Library.
If you have a lot of apps that “need” your attention, perhaps it’s time to think about how many of those cries you need to heed? It wouldn’t help with the prominence issue, but it would perhaps make it a bit easier to move those apps to where you can better see them.
Thanks Alan. I’m pretty hot on culling notifications. Only those that are timely get to provide an active notification. Others which aren’t timely or don’t provide banner type notifications are show the red dot/number.
If you have only one Homescreen, it is just one swipe to the left, to go into the library, and there it to a fraction of a second, to scroll to the bottom, and see all Badges within the different areas of the library.
Not much different to your previous approach with all Apps in some folders…
Also I reduced the number of Apps with Badges to the absolute minimum.
Most Apps offering this are not that important, that it would, from my point of view, be justifying this attention getter on them.
I’ve actually always found badges to be less than useful. I’ve got them turned off for all apps except reminders/omnifocus (= means I need to actively do something)
It’s just me, I know it, but I cannot stand seeing all those red badges everywhere with probably only a “hey, there’s a new feature” notification attached. I’ve heavily triaged my phone and of the 158 3rd party apps (wow, just looked at the count) I only have 4 or 5 enabled for notifications at all, with only 2 allowing badges.
I try to keep my interface clean to have minimal distractions, and to prevent it from causing me any anxiety looking at it.