My daughter complains that I have too many apps on my iPhone and that I really need to use folders to organize them. I would like to just do that and surprise her that I didn’t need her help. Can you explain how they work for organizing iOS apps and programs?
Having looked at a lot of different Apple iPhone and Apple iPad screens, I have concluded that there are two different strategies in how to organize your iOS apps: either you don’t use folders at all and your apps sprawl across multiple screens, or you use folders so aggressively that each folder ends up being sort of a pop-up screen, jammed to the rafters with apps, games, etc.
I have to admit, I like to see all the app icons on my iPhone and iPad, so I tend not to use folders much at all. Too much of the out of sight, out of mind problem. My children, however, all love their folders and even set up folders on my own devices so they can squirrel away a few games for a rainy day, games that I’m then clueless about because I never open the folder up!
In any case, give it a try, set up a folder or two and see if that helps you organize your apps!
To start, just grab your iPhone (or iPad) and unlock it. You’ll be looking at a screen like this:
Now put your finger on any one of the app icons and hold it there (don’t press hard: on an iPhone 6s it’s pressure sensitive and you’ll pop up an app-specific mini-menu, not what we want to do!). After a few seconds the icons should all start wiggling and an “X” will show up on every non-system app:
At this point you can delete any apps you don’t want by tapping on the “X”, and you can also touch and drag apps around to reorganize things (something I do a lot, actually).
You can also touch and drag an app on top of another app, at which point a folder is automatically created and both apps show up in the folder:
iOS automatically chooses a default name for the new folder based on the kind of apps you’re dropping into it. Here it’s decided that “Entertainment” is a good name. Meh, not so much.
But first, let’s go ahead and drop the Xfinity app icon into the folder by completing the drag into the lighter grey area:
Looks good! Now, let’s fix that name. Easy enough: tap on the “x” adjacent to the folder name and it’ll vanish plus a keyboard will appear, ready for you to tap in a better name:
Enter the new name, tap “Done” and you’re ready to now drag more apps into the folder, ultimately making your iPad or iPhone all neat and pretty:
That’s all there is to it. Want to move apps out of a folder? Tap and hold until they wiggle, then drag them into the “background” area (that is, not the light grey folder zone) and they’ll reappear on the main screen. Notice also that if you put enough apps into a folder, it gains screens of its own (the clue is the two dots on the bottom: that means there are two folder screens worth of apps).
Oh, and the blue dot next to some apps like NBC Sports, Amazon, and Netflix? That means that they’ve been updated since the last time I launched them on this particular device.
Hope that helps get you all neat and organized, and then wow’s your daughter when she sees what you’ve done!