Updated the phone to iOS 14 between the last Home Screen post and now, but that hasn’t made much of a change to the layout.
The Dock has remained constant for the third month running.
- Drafts has become my most-used app. I use it as a scratchpad wherever possible: I’m typing this very post in it, after which I’ll copy it into WordPress. I’m not using many of even the free app’s features, such as tagging, or universal sharing, or the new iOS 14 widgets. All I use is the word counter at the top, the markdown formatting menu and preview, and search.
- Todo is still in the menu but I’ve hit a plateau in its use. I want to use it as a general-purpose ‘checkout later’ tool, but I only use it for that sporadically. I think that has more to do with that I don’t have a process to revisit things I have captured, a weekly review.
- The rest of the Dock has Safari and Launch Center Pro, the latter of which I use to launch my shortcuts, as we have seen every month.
My usage of Launch Center Pro has reduced this last month for two reasons:
- One, Back Tap. In iOS 14, you can set your iPhone to perform preset actions – including Shortcuts – on tapping the back of your phone twice or thrice. I have set double-tap to launch my image-stitching shortcut, and triple tap for my expense-logging one. I’ve been using it for over a week and it still feels like magic.
- Two, Shortcuts automation, which debuted in iOS 13 but I have only begun using now. Until now, I used Launch Center Pro to run my Shortcuts on a schedule. The Shortcuts app can also do this by itself. So I have set my headache-logging shortcut to run as usual at 9pm without LCP.
On the rest of the Home Screen, I have trimmed three rows of apps down to two by moving Settings, Files, Reeder and Overcast to the second screenful of apps. I don’t use Settings often enough for it to warrant a Home Screen location. Ditto with Files. Reeder and Overcast – I mostly read my RSS feeds on the iPad, and since I’ve begun working from home, I’ve barely listened to any podcasts. I know I enjoy them, but the context is missing – either a walk or a drive to/from the office.
I tried using iOS 14’s new home screen widgets, but they didn’t take. I found them adding too much clutter. I was intrigued by the Siri Shortcuts widget, which adds eight icons to your home screen seamlessly. Their positions adjust automatically based on usage, just like with the Siri Suggestions drawer. In any case, they added too many icons on the Home Screen:
I’m looking forward to trying out other widgets to see if any will stick.
Finally, on the dedicated widgets screen itself, I have replaced the old Fantastical widget with the new iOS 14-optimised one. It’s not a great improvement over the previous one, but I don’t lose any information either:
By and large, despite the big update to iOS 14, the home screen has changed little. In fact it has gotten even simpler. This is unequivocally good, because it means I’ve been using fewer apps but more deeply. I look forward to what November brings.