You know how you have space for 9 or 12 apps or a widget. Then if you swipe left or right there is more home screen space. Do you use that extra space? I don’t. I tried but it was annoying. My center panel on home screen has my most used apps and a weather widget. All other panels blank. If I want an app not on home screen I go to the grid app list thing. You?
Yes. I have four panels.
I’m probably not the best person to answer this as I’ve had my (first) Android for less than a month. I have seven home screens and right now, I’m using them all as I’m playing with a lot of apps trying to determine which ones I want to keep. The most often used are on the center (default) home screen though but right now I’m drowning in apps. I expect that will settle down.
Center home has a weather widget that takes up half the screen but it looks cool and gives me time/temp at a glance. It also has email, twitter, wikipedia, camera, quickpic, an RPN calculator and an alarm clock/timer.
Far left is for newly installed apps. Most apps don’t survive past this screen.
Moving right, the next one is for games and puzzles (flow connect, unblock me, bloxorz, chess, go, pokerstars, a fractal generator, conways life, etc.)
Next is useful apps that couldn’t fit on the center screen: various wifi apps, evernote, file manager / drop box, google maps, transit, gas buddy, calendar widget.
Then moving right from the center screen I have a page for news: AP, BBC, NPR, NYT, New Scientist, etc.
Next screen has a bunch of misc stuff: Google Earth, Google Sky, a flashlight, Pandora, Podcast manager, Tunein radio and the scanner radio.
Far right screen has some books, zen quotes, art of war, aesops fables, a collection of quotes, just small snippets I can pull up. I have an ereader for complete books.
So, that’s it. Right now I’m loving it but some housekeeping will be necessary at some time.
Standingwave, you can make folders for stuff that’s related if you want an icon on a home page but would rather not have the whole page filled with individual apps. It helps if you have a huge app list (like I do) and might not remember what all the names of them are, so things like “games” can go in a folder rather than trying to sort through the whole app list. I have a folder named “Getting Around” and it has all the Google Maps stuff, Places, Navigator, Transit, etc. Really helps de-clutter.
I have three panels. Home page is clock and weather widget plus 8 most used apps/icons. I say icons because one of them is a folder I named “Audio/Video” and has additional camera apps plus gallery, Netflix, YouTube, etc with things audio/video/taking pictures related. Second panel is pedometer widget, Rhapsody widget, 7 icons with space for one more. Third panel is 1/2 page widgets for Facebook and Twitter. I keep a couple blank panels around simply for playing with live wallpaper. I’m a dork.
I use only one screen. I’m obsessive about having a clean interface. There is the clock, weather widget, and then my calendar. I have four icons at the very bottom: spotify, a folder with most used apps, Text messages, then phone. Everything else I use sparsely enough to wear I don’t need to have our easily accessed.
It’s easier to just show it
Wow. Mine would probably give you a seizure.
Yeah, I’ve already noticed that when you try to drop an app on top of another Android suggests creating a folder. I will probably go that route at some point but right now I’m having fun exploring the vast number of free apps that are out there.
My tablet is completely disorganized.
I have one full screen for just games. I rarely play them, but I like to hoard them from the Amazon free app of the day thing.
The next one if where I keep all of the apps I use every day, plus two ‘sticky notes’ to keep some information I need.
The next screen has a single lonely app called ‘Chinese Etymology’ that I rarely use. The idea was to have that screen saved for everything related to my Chinese learning, but I use my dictionary app so often that I moved it to the main page.
Ah well.
I have apps on all five home screens right now. They are sorted to some extent, but aren’t buried beneath folders.
Any app I find myself needing to locate in the app drawer frequently gets placed on a home page. I still have plenty of space in any way you can interpret that, and my half-assed sorting method seems to be doing pretty well.
I have 5 screens, and no apps or widgets on any of them. There’s a tray for frequently used apps at the bottom, and I have 6 folders with my app icons organized there.
One for media stuff. (Dolphin, YouTube, Pandora, etc.) One for book stuff.(calibre companion, kindle, moon reader plus, good reads.) One for games. One for utilities (WiFi manager, lookout, play store, etc) one for picture stuff, and one for chat programs.
I used to have a bunch of screens filled with all kinds of apps that I eventually realized I never actually used, and something was a massive battery drain (my battery would go from 100% to 1% in about 2 hours), so I deleted everything except the one external app I do actually use and voila battery life went back to normal.
So I’m back to just one screen. I really only use it for calls and texting anyway.
That doesn’t look stock. Are you using a launcher or just some icon packs?
I don’t use multiples. I prefer folders on my one home screen (I even delete the extras when I install a new launcher). I tried multiple screens, and that just didn’t work as well for me.
Yeah, I’m using the Apex launcher with a couple of different packs and widgets. I really like the launcher because I can control settings with different movements. For example: double tap launches my camera, two finger swipe down brings up settings, and pinch brings up master volume control.
The only app on my ‘home home’ screen is my clock. 1st screen left is internet-type apps: FB, Twitter, Amazon, Play Store. 1st screen right is exercise, weather, navigation apps. 2nd screen right is fun apps, games, and books.
I have stuff on all 7 screens.
Home Screen- clock, Music folder, What’s App, WeatherBug app, Internet, Gmail, Maps and People, and toggle switches for GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and Sound Profile.
L1: full screen calendar
L2: about a dozen apps, most of which I don’t use more than once a month. This could use some cleaning.
L3: full screen stock page
R1: another dozen assorted apps, including a google search box.
R2: a full screen weather app
R3: a few assorted apps
Clearly, I have a bunch of apps I rarely use that could probably get cleaned up, but what’s the advantage to that? I have space, I might as well use it.
I have apps on all the home screens. I use the screens to group them by categories.
How do you change folder appearance in Apex? I don’t really care for the default, but can’t seem to figure out changing it (I have a day or two of experience with this launcher).
The only one that’s not on my main home screen is the camera. Otherwise, sometimes (at least with my old Droid), I’d accidentally push the camera icon, and the phone would take a few seconds to activate the camera. Time is money, and I don’t have those few seconds to spare.
Now that I’ve discovered folders I can probably get it down to four, but I have large widgets that take up a lot of real estate.