I keep all 204 of my iPhone apps on just one home screen - here's the system I use to stay organized
First, let's quickly talk numbers.
I break my home screen into three sections: The Dock, Shortcuts, and Folders.
The Dock features my four most important iPhone apps.
In this case, it's Apple's Phone and Safari apps for calling and web browsing, respectively, as well as Edison's AI-powered Mail app for email (replacing Apple's default Mail app), and Spotify for all my music needs (replacing Apple Music).
Above the Dock are all my Shortcuts: I use these 12 apps very often, so I don't organize them into folders — out of sight, out of mind, you know — and I keep all of them lower on the screen so they're easier to reach with my thumb.
My shortcuts consist of:
— Uber, for getting from A to B
— Splitwise, for keeping track of all of the bills I split with my partner
— Apple's Notes app, for taking quick notes
— Slack, for communicating with coworkers
— Google Hangouts, for chatting with friends
— Twitter, because I'm a glutton for punishment
— Apollo, the best Reddit app there is
— Apple's Messages app, for texting friends and family
— The App Store, for finding new apps and updates
— Things 3, for keeping my entire life organized
— Settings, to quickly make system-wide changes
Above all my shortcuts are my folders. I batch all new and lesser-used apps into 12 categories.
My 12 folder categories include:
— News, for reading up on current events (19 apps)
— Buy, for wallet and financial information (10 apps)
— Food & Health, for ordering food, recording what I eat, and tracking my overall fitness (23 apps)
— Movies, for watching videos and trailers (16 apps)
— Sports, for following news, games, and scores (9 apps)
— Music, for podcasts and other audio apps required by certain headphones (13 apps)
— Games, for giving my mind a break (30 apps)
— Find, for navigating and getting around cities (15 apps)
— Tools, for tracking time, the weather, and my documents (33 apps)
— Contact, for social media apps (17 apps)
— Foto, for storing and editing photos and videos (12 apps)
— Work, for organizing all the apps that help me do my job (20 apps)
When I download new apps, I'll usually keep them on a second page for a short amount of time so I remember what my new apps actually are. After awhile, if I deem them useful enough to keep, I'll organize those apps into folders — or, on the rare occasion, an app might come along and supplant one of my shortcuts. Things 3 supplanted Pokémon Go from my home screen most recently.
This isn't the only way to organize your iPhone apps, but if you're like me, and you have hundreds of apps, this might be a helpful place to start.
Plenty of people organize their apps in different ways — some people do it by the color of the app icon, or just by the order in which they were downloaded. My fiancée doesn't use folders at all; she just keeps all of her apps on separate pages.
Everyone has their own system, and this one's mine. It's not perfect, but I like knowing that everything I have is on a single home page. And if I don't immediately know where it is, I can just pull my finger down on the screen and search for it.
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