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How to use a blank home screen on iPad, and why you'll love it!
Apr 30, 2024
More Apple news: http://www.cultofmac.com What’s on your main iPad home screen? Is it organized so that you can find your most-used apps quickly? Or have you decided to arrange the icons by color? Or divided up the grid by adding a row of blank spaces? Those are pretty neat ideas, but today I’m going to suggest you do something even more radical. How about keeping your home screen entirely blank? No icons, no folders, nothing. Just the Dock, Spotlight search, and an easier-to-use iPad. Tutorial Written by: Charlie Sorrel Follow us! Twitter: https://twitter.com/cultofmac Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cultofmac Instagram: https://instagram.com/cultofmac/
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0:00
Hey guys, Steve here and I want to know what's on your iPad home screen
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Let me know in the comments section, but is it organised so you can find your most used apps quickly or have you decided to arrange your icons by colour
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Either of those ideas are pretty cool, but today I'm going to suggest something even
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more radical. How about having your home screen completely blank? No icons, no folders, no nothing
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Now you can opt for a blank home screen on any iOS device, but it's most useful on an iPad
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Why waste all of that handy screen space on any device, let alone one that, thanks to
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its ridiculously large icon spacing, doesn't really let you fit much on there to begin with
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One reason might be aesthetic. With nothing but a row of icons in the dock, you can see your home screen wallpaper full
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screen and beautiful. But that's not really a good reason to ditch the icons
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No, the blank home screen works because, since iOS 11, the home screen is the worst place
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to keep your apps. In iOS 11, Apple completely revamped the iOS dock
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The problem was the limit on the number of items you could keep in there, in-game handoff
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and in-game auto-added apps. The dock also became accessible from inside apps, not just visible on the home screen
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iOS 11 also added drag and drop, with a proper split screen mode
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To use this though, you need to be able to grab and drag an app's icon, or you need
1:16
to be able to find that app icon whilst you're dragging a file. You might want to drag an image from an email in the photos app for example, or you may
1:23
want to drag the notes app to share the screen with Safari
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If you regularly use drag and drop, then you will know that the worst place for an icon to be is on the home screen
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If an app is in the dock, you can quickly swipe up and grab it wherever you are. If it's on the home screen, then you have to quit out of the current app to find it
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then drag it and then open the original app again. So it makes sense to put as many icons as possible into the dock
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You can also add folders to the dock, making the number of items accessible from the dock
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effectively infinite. The other recent game changer in iOS was the improvement of spotlight search
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The search you can perform by swiping down on the home screen, and this has gotten even
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better with the iOS 12 betas. Spotlight search allows you to quickly find apps, and to drag those apps out of a search
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result and into a split screen. You can even drag a file, then activate search, find the app you want, launch the app and
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drag the file onto it. To set up your blank home screen, first put all of your most used apps into the dock
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You've probably already done this, don't go too crazy as the icons shrink to make more
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space for new ones, and eventually it can be impossible to tap them, especially in portrait orientation
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The most important dock items are the apps you launch over and over, perhaps safari and
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your to do app of choice, and the apps you use often with drag and drop, notes, files
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and so on. Then gather all of the app icons on your first home screen and drop them into a folder
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This is done by dragging one icon on top of another to create a folder, then dragging the remaining icons into that folder
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Next drag that folder to your dock and choose an awesome new wallpaper, because you're finally
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going to be able to see it. Now your entire home screen is in your dock, so what
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After all, now you need two taps to get to anything that previously required one, or
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do you? Well now, all of the apps on your home screen are available when inside any app
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You can drag and drop to and from any of those apps, and also use them in split view
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You can access your old first home screen from any other home screen. You only need to make the first home screen blank, the rest of them can be as chaotic
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as before, and you can always access the original from its folder in the dock
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Any app can be your home screen now. You know how you always wished you could use that weather app as a home screen background
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Well now you can. It's functionally more or less equivalent. You can swipe anywhere on that huge blank home screen in order to access spotlight search
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The only thing you need to remember is what all of those apps are called, so you can type in their names
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Taken together, these advantages far outweigh the one big disadvantage of keeping all of
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those most used apps in a dock folder. You can no longer just hit the home button to head straight to the home screen
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And always know that, say, hitting the top left icon will open the settings app
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But even this problem will disappear soon. With iOS 12, you can now swipe up to get to the home screen and the next iPad is likely
4:01
to come without a home button, meaning you'll have to use your iPad this way
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So if you need to swipe to get there, why not swipe to the dock instead
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Well there's it for this video, if you're still not sure, give it a try
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If you don't like it, then just empty that folder back onto your home screen and you'll be back to where you were
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If you enjoyed this video or found it useful, please hit that like button, subscribe if
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you haven't already and I'll catch you in the next one
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