Isn’t this just Sherlocking which people complain about all the time when Apple adds a feature or creates an app that does what some third party was already doing
It’s a little more nuanced than that I think. This allows you to change the color of the icon with the same design. A lot of the time the “premium” icons offered in apps aren’t just different colors but entirely different designs that can be quite laborious to make, so I think it’s reasonable for developers to charge for those.
But for people who just want to color code apps for organization or something this is great, it’s free and all they care about is the color so it’s great that they can do it easily now. Plus it’ll work for apps that don’t offer multiple icons at all, like mine don’t.
Charging people to change the color of the app icon is so dumb anyway. I'm not one for apple taking $$ from developers but in this instance it shouldn't be something that is charged for in the first place.
I'd be surprised if it worked that way. It's more likely that apps can provide some sort of template for exactly that purpose. And I'm pretty sure that developers will be able to disable this for their apps. I could see Apple automatically enabling this for all apps, though.
Businesses generally don't like not having control over the presentation of their software, especially if it's their logo.
Personally, I'd welcome this change. I try to make the appearance of my apps as customizable as possible and this would certainly make that much easier for me.
Apple normally doesn’t show iOS development things off that can be disabled by devs. We’ll see if they show that action on stage. I’m just happy to be able to get ride of the damn grid.
> And I'm pretty sure that developers will be able to disable this for their apps. I could see Apple automatically enabling this for all apps, though.
I can see this 100% happening and most apps opting out of it, leading us to end up with half-ass themed icons
I would think this feature would end up a lot like material themes on Android, I wouldn’t expect iOS developers to disable it more then they do on Android and if so I’m sure the users would get mad at the devs for not allowing their perfect themed Home Screen which may push them to enable it.
I mean, businesses have seemed to handle Android users allowing them to change their logos to anime girl icons or some shit like that for years. In a less extreme example there are literally hundreds of icon packs with legit variations of existing company branding/logos
Aren’t those all features of third party launchers or custom roms? Or does “material you“ allow users to make those changes on unmodified versions of Android? It’s been a while since I’ve used a a stock version of Android, so I genuinely don’t know.
And from what I can tell, Apple is going to limit the shading to one color.
> For instance, they could make all their social networking apps have a *blue* color, and all their finance apps have a *blue* color.
A little shocked that’s allowed tbh. Hopefully changing the app icon becomes a system feature and makes the current in-app system redundant.
I totally get charging for the icon designs but the actual ability to change the icon being paywalled has always annoyed me.
It’s a pretty sketchy rumour given that Apple goes to great lengths to brand their content. The red in Music, the Orange in Books, the blue on the App Store are all carefully chosen and serve to bolster each service or feature. I don’t see them letting you make the background of the App Store brown or some ugly ass shade of yellow. Let alone actually change them to something different entirely.
As an app developer I often add this feature so I can offer in app purchases. I consider this a “useless feature” and people buying pro for this are rather donating as i normally keep the core functionalities free.
So I just tried it, and while it doesn't open shortcuts first, it does show that the shortcut has run in the Dynamic Island. Still not a great UX in my opinion
Are you sure? I just tested it and the app I set an icon for opened immediately.
That’s a shortcuts notification that pops up but even that you can disable.
https://preview.redd.it/qq8mws3yks2d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0172e60d65c39d1084be666c9fa1161d9b792ec
This is the UI when I open the app. The Dynamic Island has the original app icon, and a tick
It’s been tweaked so that clicking on an automation icon immediately starts it without any prompt, or notification. So shortcuts enables icon changed function the same as normal icons aside from the long press action menu.
You can set a custom shortcut with a custom icon, you loose notification badges and every time you launch it you get a notification from shortcuts app. It’s a… meh workaround
I mean, we hire designers to make special and very different app icons, not just a different shade of grey and throw that in as a perk. I don't think many apps really charge you ONLY for a new app icon — rather, they put it in as a bonus for those who upgrade.
For some apps (RIP Apollo) the app itself was free or really cheap and people who appreciated it could buy special app icons as a sort of tip jar. It's sort of like hats in TF2: sell the cosmetics at a premium so you don't have to charge (or don't have to charge *much*) for the core functionality.
Thats the sleep program in Health. You have to scroll to it, but you can edit your sleep schedule, and have different alarms set for different days.
Once you set it up, it shows up at the top of your alarms in the time app.
One thing I really do miss from android is ability to easily cancel upcoming alarms without going into the clock app. I always set 3-4 alarms just in case. Android would show you a notifications asking if you want to cancel if you're using your phone 10-15 mins before the alarm.
Maybe in the future we can set an alarm for a certain time and day. Like maybe I want an alarm for the Saturday after next. I can put a calendar reminder in but I don’t get an alarm for it at a specific time. I just get a notification and my phone is on silent so I miss it.
THE TIME IS NOW. CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE.
WE CAN, SHOULD, WILL AND MUST BLOW UP THE MOON.
(And we’ll do it during a full moon to make sure we get all of it)
I hope it’s optional. I hate how material you looks. I may be the only person in the world that thinks that but it just looks ugly to me.
Super happy about placing icons wherever though
I personally think Material You looks great but is less functional, because you’re relying on muscle memory to find icons quickly, otherwise the icons blend in too much and look too similar for fast visual identification. That being said I’ll still use the new iOS feature if true for the A E S T H E T I C
What I miss about android is that you place an icon somewhere and it stays forver. On iPhone I'm always playing jigsaw puzzle and I hate it. I miss placing icons where I wanted like on a desktop. Also I miss Nova launcher to customize the grid and dit more icons and take the icon labels off.
Nah, I agree. I’m pretty happy with the way iOS looks.
I am a pretty picky person. In my early Windows days, customization was something I spent a LOT of time on.
But I’m pretty happy with everything iOS/macOS released for almost 20 years now.
Side note, though. I won’t download an app if I don’t like the icon. It USUALLY means the app is also poorly designed but NOT always.
The Android feature is to be able to download and install an entirely different desktop environment with its own features.
I use Nova Launcher, it lets me play with the icons, the unread counts, I can even change the grid size. And I can pin apps between the grid spaces too.
Control or they seem to have an affinity for minimalism/essentialism and having everyone use the same default experience is probably good for them, for marketing, less to learn and easier to help people since everyone has the same simple knowledge base, etc. It's already hard enough teaching my older relatives how to use their phone, this is just another layer of complexity.
I agree. So many 3rd party android launchers fail at the grid and icon placement in terms of widget scaling and other things.
I found Nova to be the best for maintaining good proportions but others seem to have weirdly small text or skewed look based on how you stretched the widget or whatever.
Apple has removed all of this by controlling how the Home Screen looks so there is uniformity and less likely for user error.
I think they’re loosening up a bit on certain areas and maintaining or focusing control on others. It isn’t an all-or-nothing situation, it’s more about tendencies and patterns.
I think they artificially restrict areas of the UI in anticipation of drip feeding things that feel like innovation because they've hit a wall in what they can really do otherwise.
Eh, I think that’s a bit of a pessimistic view on it. I think they care about crafting the UX of their products almost to a detriment. I think it’s just their internal philosophy, and as the company grows and changes sometimes that shifts their perspective on things. I don’t think it’s necessarily always intentional hostility towards users, or some kind of cash grab any more than anything else they do.
The longer Apple presses on without the direct influence of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, the fewer people they have in design and decision making roles who do things their way.
That’s a mixed bag, but it explains why they’ve gotten looser (and, at times, sloppier) about some things over time.
One of Apple's main design philosophies is to avoid situations where the user can ruin their setup or rearrange things so interaction becomes confusing. They do this because people rarely take the blame when they are the ones who messed things up and will instead claim the device is poorly made and/or difficult to use.
>One of Apple's main design philosophies is to avoid situations where the user can ruin their setup
Lol this is so silly cause the amount of times I've ruined my setup because of the way Apps interact when moving them is a lot. I have to move multiple apps back to their original position is way more on iOS than it was when I used an Android phone.
And yet we all blame Apple for not allowing a basic feature which is pretty common in every mobile.. I get your point… but rearranging app icons is not something 100% of the userbase would do and if they’re doing it, then they probably know what they’re doing..
but I also see one more reason for such a huge delay in implementing this feature now is that they never had a compulsion to make the ui customizable all these years.. but now they’re competing very hard with android/competitor brands
> we all blame Apple for not allowing a basic feature which is pretty common in every mobile
When it comes to the app icon grid, I can assure you a whole lot of people aren’t upset about it at all. They are used to the way it works now and don’t give it another thought.
That's Apples fault then. They could make an option to turn the new customization on or off, make it off by default. The easily confused users are unlikely to go looking in settings to turn on a feature they don't understand.
Simplifies the brand & marketing tremendously, one universal fully controlled product image to sink their roots into. Brad Pitts iPhone looks just like mine, Apple loves that & so do I.
It’s seemingly run its course & gotten stale for the brand, so they’re taking a bite out Androids slice of the pie, and they’ll increase revenue for shareholders. They’re not in the business of losing, every micro adjustment they make is extremely calculated & intentional.
One thing I still wish for is to be able to search for an app and have it located for you rather than just opened. The App Library helped a little bit. I’d just like to be able to find it amidst hundreds of similar icons.
Isn’t pulling down on the Home Screen and typing the app name in search the solution?
If the app isn’t installed it even shows up as downloadable if it’s found in App Store.
Switch over to using the App Library and your quality of life will be improved quite substantially.
Trying to sort apps into folders yourself is like going back to 2001 and the difference between trying to manage your music library into manually organized folders vs just letting iTunes do it.
Along with this, I really wish I could add some sort of meta data to an app for the search. I don’t expect to be allowed to rename an app but it’d be super nice if I didn’t have to remember the obscure name or icon of some of my apps.
That would be nice, sometimes I can’t remember the name of my health record app (MyChart), being able to type medical or health and have all the related app that I want to see show up
If an app is hidden away so far that you can't find it, you can drag the icon from spotlight search to where you want it to be. You'll have it twice then, but if you ever stumble onto the other one, you can just remove that one.
Not a solution, but a handy workaround I've used myself as well.
I’m guessing you don’t use App folders, because if you did it would do this for you. The folder name the app is in is listed to the right of the result.
But there’s a clear difference between stuff people want and rumour because they want it and the stuff that actually gets reported by analysts with a track record.
When Gurman reports stuff like this you can take it to the bank.
I'll settle for recoloring and leaving gaps where I want, but I'd really prefer the native ability to just change the icon to whatever I want, a la an icon pack or something. Oh, and 5 icons on the home row while we're at it!
Apple adds a basic feature that should've been added 10 years ago, that has been a jailbreak tweak for 15 years and fan boys will praise them. Fucking pathetic
That would be cool, given that iOS widgets behave very similar to the live tiles from Windows Phone. App drawer is to the right too like Windows Phone.
I don't really care about the recoloring but it's cool for those who do care. The free placement of icons though will be a very welcome and long overdo feature making it easier to use one handed.
Jobs wanted to remove the app grid and a hippie UX designer said it would be too confusing. That same designer said a universal back button or gesture would be too confusing.
I hate this man. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imran_Chaudhri
The one thing I hate about these changes is I have to hear Android users come out of the woodwork to get their two cents in about how long Android has been able to do it.
Being able to place app icons wherever we want is such a long overdue and basic UI feature, glad it's being implemented. For one-handed phone use, being able to place apps in the bottom corners rather than defaulting to the top is critical. I think most phone developers have forgotten how often phones are used 1-handed and this is a very basic feature that should have been implemented a decade ago.
I would LOVE for them to bring back the ability for me to quickly organize my home screen on MacOS- I haven’t changed mine in years because the jiggly drag thing drives be insane.
At the *very least least* give me a shortcut to send ALL apps to App Library, and then let me use App Library to drag apps out to home screen.
Also I’d love the *option* to have home screen landscape work again; I really liked when the Plus phones worked like iPads if you had them mounted in landscape and needed to switch apps.
It’s also pretty wild we have multitasking still.
Okay so just a question for folks more familiar with the Android landscape: When I had an Android phone about 9 years ago, the only way to do this was to download icon packs, which would inevitably be missing icons for many apps. Has that changed? Because my guess would be that Apple will leverage tech similar to the subject-finding tech they have for photos. Figure out where the icon is within the square, isolate it, and allow the icon and square background to be independently customized across all icons. Am I (at least theoretically) in the ballpark here?
Finally. I want a Home Screen that I can use with gloves while motorcycling. I have been considering switching from iOS, but being able to space out icons could be a game changer
Honestly just happy we are moving away from the stupid ass icon shortcuts trend. Was such a pain in the ass to set up and completely unnecessary.
And, also some of the icon packs were flat out ugly as hell.
Finally (placing the apps anywhere that is. With phone screens getting larger, this should have happened years ago. Now I won't have to fill the screen up with widgets just to get the icons bottom up (instead of top down).
Case in point, see iOS lockscreen customization and then see the recent Samsung OneUI release that makes their lockscreen work almost exactly like the iOS version.
Nothing wrong with this imo. Let both companies adapt the best of each other. At the end it’s us consumers that benefit from this sharing of ideas.
No one is saying it’s revolutionary. It’s just nice to finally get this feature. It’s the only thing I miss from android, being able to customize my Home Screen how I want.
Not quickly enough. I’m an Apple boy, have a MacBook, iPad, iPhone but the Home Screen/app drawer is a janky, unintuitive shitshow. Those disagreeing are delusional.
I cannot wait to make everything monochromatic. My background has been solid black for years now. Badge alerts almost completely muted across the board, apps I use infrequently are hidden. It’s night and day on my stress.
This is interesting because a number of apps prevent you from customizing the app icon unless you pay extra.
Exactly why I welcome this feature.
Apple needs to add free features that compete with paid ones
Isn’t this just Sherlocking which people complain about all the time when Apple adds a feature or creates an app that does what some third party was already doing
Yes. And I support it.
Who gives a fuck?
My man!
This has been a feature on jailbroken iphones since I had an iPhone 5 lmao don't be too concerned for the poor ios developers.
It’s a little more nuanced than that I think. This allows you to change the color of the icon with the same design. A lot of the time the “premium” icons offered in apps aren’t just different colors but entirely different designs that can be quite laborious to make, so I think it’s reasonable for developers to charge for those. But for people who just want to color code apps for organization or something this is great, it’s free and all they care about is the color so it’s great that they can do it easily now. Plus it’ll work for apps that don’t offer multiple icons at all, like mine don’t.
Charging people to change the color of the app icon is so dumb anyway. I'm not one for apple taking $$ from developers but in this instance it shouldn't be something that is charged for in the first place.
To me that’s a different item. iOS will shade the icon but only the app makers will let you change the icon completely.
I'd be surprised if it worked that way. It's more likely that apps can provide some sort of template for exactly that purpose. And I'm pretty sure that developers will be able to disable this for their apps. I could see Apple automatically enabling this for all apps, though. Businesses generally don't like not having control over the presentation of their software, especially if it's their logo. Personally, I'd welcome this change. I try to make the appearance of my apps as customizable as possible and this would certainly make that much easier for me.
Yeah I can’t imagine Apple freely-allowing users to essentially fuck with a brand’s logo.
Apple normally doesn’t show iOS development things off that can be disabled by devs. We’ll see if they show that action on stage. I’m just happy to be able to get ride of the damn grid.
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Wasn't that "feature" added later because a lot of devs complained about users running iOS apps on macos. I'm not 100% sure to be honest.
> And I'm pretty sure that developers will be able to disable this for their apps. I could see Apple automatically enabling this for all apps, though. I can see this 100% happening and most apps opting out of it, leading us to end up with half-ass themed icons
I would think this feature would end up a lot like material themes on Android, I wouldn’t expect iOS developers to disable it more then they do on Android and if so I’m sure the users would get mad at the devs for not allowing their perfect themed Home Screen which may push them to enable it.
I mean, businesses have seemed to handle Android users allowing them to change their logos to anime girl icons or some shit like that for years. In a less extreme example there are literally hundreds of icon packs with legit variations of existing company branding/logos
Aren’t those all features of third party launchers or custom roms? Or does “material you“ allow users to make those changes on unmodified versions of Android? It’s been a while since I’ve used a a stock version of Android, so I genuinely don’t know.
I know the latest version of OneUI supports this, my Tab S9 allows me to either recolor or flat out change the icon with no 3rd party launcher
My guess is that (if it is a thing) it will be like dark mode. System level control, but devs aren't exactly forced to implement it.
And from what I can tell, Apple is going to limit the shading to one color. > For instance, they could make all their social networking apps have a *blue* color, and all their finance apps have a *blue* color.
A little shocked that’s allowed tbh. Hopefully changing the app icon becomes a system feature and makes the current in-app system redundant. I totally get charging for the icon designs but the actual ability to change the icon being paywalled has always annoyed me.
It’s a pretty sketchy rumour given that Apple goes to great lengths to brand their content. The red in Music, the Orange in Books, the blue on the App Store are all carefully chosen and serve to bolster each service or feature. I don’t see them letting you make the background of the App Store brown or some ugly ass shade of yellow. Let alone actually change them to something different entirely.
As an app developer I often add this feature so I can offer in app purchases. I consider this a “useless feature” and people buying pro for this are rather donating as i normally keep the core functionalities free.
Can't you just set a custom icon via Shortcuts with them anyways?
Yes, but it’s not the same. It’s a work around for a silly limitation
It’s a pretty good work around though. The only place where the shortcuts icon doesn’t reflect is when switching apps, other than that, it’s good
You do lose long-press functions & notification badges with the shortcuts trick too
Oh shit, I forgot about long presses on icons because of them ditching that 3D press touchscreen tech. Whatever it was called.
force touch, so sad it's no longer a feature
Couldn’t agree more. Text selection is abhorrent since the departure of Force Touch/3D Touch.
I disagree. It doesn't open the app directly. It opens shortcuts for half a second first. Visually it looks okay on the screen, but the UX isn't great
It used to, but not anymore
So I just tried it, and while it doesn't open shortcuts first, it does show that the shortcut has run in the Dynamic Island. Still not a great UX in my opinion
It’s worse on a phone without the Dynamic Island, a notification pops up that takes like a quarter of the screen
I’d say it’s pretty great for a workaround…
Are you sure? I just tested it and the app I set an icon for opened immediately. That’s a shortcuts notification that pops up but even that you can disable.
https://preview.redd.it/qq8mws3yks2d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0172e60d65c39d1084be666c9fa1161d9b792ec This is the UI when I open the app. The Dynamic Island has the original app icon, and a tick
Does your shortcut have “Dismiss Siri and Continue” before Open App?
It’s been tweaked so that clicking on an automation icon immediately starts it without any prompt, or notification. So shortcuts enables icon changed function the same as normal icons aside from the long press action menu.
You can set a custom shortcut with a custom icon, you loose notification badges and every time you launch it you get a notification from shortcuts app. It’s a… meh workaround
This is definitely not going to change
Literally Reddit mobile
I mean, we hire designers to make special and very different app icons, not just a different shade of grey and throw that in as a perk. I don't think many apps really charge you ONLY for a new app icon — rather, they put it in as a bonus for those who upgrade.
It's only seen as a bonus, when OS limits basic things like changing an icon.
It’s funny that you call it a basic thing when I never even considered wanting to change icons, and I love tinkering with things.
It's also interesting because I could recolor apps and move them anywhere on my jailbroken iPhone 3G in 2009.
The fact that’s a “paid feature” is kinda disturbing… same with ringtones.
Ringtones were some of the biggest grifts in the 2000s
And I’m surprised there are people dumb enough to pay for that
For some apps (RIP Apollo) the app itself was free or really cheap and people who appreciated it could buy special app icons as a sort of tip jar. It's sort of like hats in TF2: sell the cosmetics at a premium so you don't have to charge (or don't have to charge *much*) for the core functionality.
WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY
Apple remaining king of innovation, maybe in the next decade we can set alarm volumes in the clock app but hard to say
Or, imagine being able to set an alarm on a specific day and time?
No, that’s impossible. We haven’t reached that point yet.
Beyond the current limits of human understanding
With the power of the M32 Chip, anything is possible.
Wait I'm primarily an android user. Is this genuinely not a feature????
You can set an alarm for every Tuesday, but not one for next Tuesday, if that makes sense.
Don’t worry brother, AI Siri will do that for us on iOS 18. Inexplicably this will not be based on any user input.
Create an event in the calendar?
Thats the sleep program in Health. You have to scroll to it, but you can edit your sleep schedule, and have different alarms set for different days. Once you set it up, it shows up at the top of your alarms in the time app.
Only certain days of the week. I can’t, for example, set an alarm on July 29th when I know I have work.
Your schedule is far too advanced for our current understanding of technology. Sorry.
No, that is indeed bullshit.
I don’t trust it for some reason. I feel like I tried it and my alarm never went off or something
No you would literally need quantum computers deployed at scale for that.
Or change the length of alarm snooze time. #oneday
No you heathen. It MUST be nine minutes. That’s a universal law
Psychopath
One thing I really do miss from android is ability to easily cancel upcoming alarms without going into the clock app. I always set 3-4 alarms just in case. Android would show you a notifications asking if you want to cancel if you're using your phone 10-15 mins before the alarm.
Maybe in the future we can set an alarm for a certain time and day. Like maybe I want an alarm for the Saturday after next. I can put a calendar reminder in but I don’t get an alarm for it at a specific time. I just get a notification and my phone is on silent so I miss it.
Maybe one day we’ll be able to decide a lot of things but the technology isn’t quite there yet for an alarm app that advanced. Maybe iOS 25.
That's a science fiction fantasy
or maybe have the Alarm play at all 💀
Or the ability to dismiss alarms without having to setup a wake up alarm. One of the main things I miss from android.
Next decade will be spent making the iPad calculator app. It’s not possible with current technology
Exclusively powered by the A18 Pro
THE TIME IS NOW. CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE. WE CAN, SHOULD, WILL AND MUST BLOW UP THE MOON. (And we’ll do it during a full moon to make sure we get all of it)
we are all bots here except for you
Am I the only one who read this in Patrick’s voice?
It sounds like the Android Material You feature where you can colour the app icons based on your wallpaper.
I hope it’s optional. I hate how material you looks. I may be the only person in the world that thinks that but it just looks ugly to me. Super happy about placing icons wherever though
I personally think Material You looks great but is less functional, because you’re relying on muscle memory to find icons quickly, otherwise the icons blend in too much and look too similar for fast visual identification. That being said I’ll still use the new iOS feature if true for the A E S T H E T I C
What I miss about android is that you place an icon somewhere and it stays forver. On iPhone I'm always playing jigsaw puzzle and I hate it. I miss placing icons where I wanted like on a desktop. Also I miss Nova launcher to customize the grid and dit more icons and take the icon labels off.
I agree completely. In a bit of irony I think apples attempt to control the experience arguably makes it more hostile to users in this way.
I like material you in a lot of ways, but hate how uniform and boring the app icons are.
Themed icons are optional and just for people who like asthetics or monochrome looking homescreen. App icons are colored in app drawer
Nah, I agree. I’m pretty happy with the way iOS looks. I am a pretty picky person. In my early Windows days, customization was something I spent a LOT of time on. But I’m pretty happy with everything iOS/macOS released for almost 20 years now. Side note, though. I won’t download an app if I don’t like the icon. It USUALLY means the app is also poorly designed but NOT always.
Hey look at this innovation we invented that android has had for 5 years! - apple every time they 'innovate'
The Android feature is to be able to download and install an entirely different desktop environment with its own features. I use Nova Launcher, it lets me play with the icons, the unread counts, I can even change the grid size. And I can pin apps between the grid spaces too.
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Gonna look like my jailbroken iphone from 2012 I had bad taste.
And every comment will be “welcome to 2016 hur hur hur”
Unfortunately in this case I think it'll be something like "welcome to 2008" edit: "hur hur hur"
can i put everything behind the dynamic island so my life gets even more miserable
I would like to move to the dynamic island and never leave
The ^(Dynamic) Island (2005)
Can I switch the Dynamic Island hold vs click? I hate how I have to hold for the small screen and click opens the entire app
Whoa hold up now..that is asking for too much
AI is good but it's not that good
Thank you for validating me
You’re welcome. It drives me nuts
It really doesn't make any sense that the "quick access" menu takes the longest to open.
Cannot believe it took them 17 years to remove the app grid anchoring. I don't understand why they held back this long.
They like tight control over the user experience. I think it’s really as simple as that.
Control or they seem to have an affinity for minimalism/essentialism and having everyone use the same default experience is probably good for them, for marketing, less to learn and easier to help people since everyone has the same simple knowledge base, etc. It's already hard enough teaching my older relatives how to use their phone, this is just another layer of complexity.
This is the real reason right here. I may not agree with their control 100% but there is a reason behind it.
I agree. So many 3rd party android launchers fail at the grid and icon placement in terms of widget scaling and other things. I found Nova to be the best for maintaining good proportions but others seem to have weirdly small text or skewed look based on how you stretched the widget or whatever. Apple has removed all of this by controlling how the Home Screen looks so there is uniformity and less likely for user error.
Most users that will download and install a third party launcher will learn or know how to customize their screen
So now they don't?
I think they’re loosening up a bit on certain areas and maintaining or focusing control on others. It isn’t an all-or-nothing situation, it’s more about tendencies and patterns.
I think they artificially restrict areas of the UI in anticipation of drip feeding things that feel like innovation because they've hit a wall in what they can really do otherwise.
Eh, I think that’s a bit of a pessimistic view on it. I think they care about crafting the UX of their products almost to a detriment. I think it’s just their internal philosophy, and as the company grows and changes sometimes that shifts their perspective on things. I don’t think it’s necessarily always intentional hostility towards users, or some kind of cash grab any more than anything else they do.
The longer Apple presses on without the direct influence of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, the fewer people they have in design and decision making roles who do things their way. That’s a mixed bag, but it explains why they’ve gotten looser (and, at times, sloppier) about some things over time.
Unhealthy tight control
It makes all iPhones look the same. Once they gave in and allowed widgets, that kind of went out the window.
One of Apple's main design philosophies is to avoid situations where the user can ruin their setup or rearrange things so interaction becomes confusing. They do this because people rarely take the blame when they are the ones who messed things up and will instead claim the device is poorly made and/or difficult to use.
>One of Apple's main design philosophies is to avoid situations where the user can ruin their setup Lol this is so silly cause the amount of times I've ruined my setup because of the way Apps interact when moving them is a lot. I have to move multiple apps back to their original position is way more on iOS than it was when I used an Android phone.
And yet we all blame Apple for not allowing a basic feature which is pretty common in every mobile.. I get your point… but rearranging app icons is not something 100% of the userbase would do and if they’re doing it, then they probably know what they’re doing.. but I also see one more reason for such a huge delay in implementing this feature now is that they never had a compulsion to make the ui customizable all these years.. but now they’re competing very hard with android/competitor brands
> we all blame Apple for not allowing a basic feature which is pretty common in every mobile When it comes to the app icon grid, I can assure you a whole lot of people aren’t upset about it at all. They are used to the way it works now and don’t give it another thought.
Every time they introduce some kind of customization, a certain percentage of users gets extremely confused by it.
That's Apples fault then. They could make an option to turn the new customization on or off, make it off by default. The easily confused users are unlikely to go looking in settings to turn on a feature they don't understand.
Simplifies the brand & marketing tremendously, one universal fully controlled product image to sink their roots into. Brad Pitts iPhone looks just like mine, Apple loves that & so do I. It’s seemingly run its course & gotten stale for the brand, so they’re taking a bite out Androids slice of the pie, and they’ll increase revenue for shareholders. They’re not in the business of losing, every micro adjustment they make is extremely calculated & intentional.
>Brad Pitts iPhone looks just like mine, Apple loves that & so do I. I still remember when Apple's slogan was "Think Different"
One thing I still wish for is to be able to search for an app and have it located for you rather than just opened. The App Library helped a little bit. I’d just like to be able to find it amidst hundreds of similar icons.
Just curious, for what purpose if not to open it? 😅 like you just want to make sure it’s still there?
Probably so that he knows where it is for next time.
And move it now so it's closer to the home page.
If you just want to move it, you can drag it right out of the search results.
That duplicates it.
Which is stupid.
Isn’t pulling down on the Home Screen and typing the app name in search the solution? If the app isn’t installed it even shows up as downloadable if it’s found in App Store.
Yes, but that doesn’t tell you which folder you stuck the app into and forgot about.
It 100% does. I literally just pulled down, typed “Reddit” and it found the app and to the right has the folder name listed, which for me is “Social”.
Switch over to using the App Library and your quality of life will be improved quite substantially. Trying to sort apps into folders yourself is like going back to 2001 and the difference between trying to manage your music library into manually organized folders vs just letting iTunes do it.
The App Library is horrendous, it's the opposite of a QoL improvement.
The app library is so bad, the automatic sorting is actually abysmal.
Along with this, I really wish I could add some sort of meta data to an app for the search. I don’t expect to be allowed to rename an app but it’d be super nice if I didn’t have to remember the obscure name or icon of some of my apps.
That would be nice, sometimes I can’t remember the name of my health record app (MyChart), being able to type medical or health and have all the related app that I want to see show up
My condo association uses an app randomly named “AppFolio Portal”.
If an app is hidden away so far that you can't find it, you can drag the icon from spotlight search to where you want it to be. You'll have it twice then, but if you ever stumble onto the other one, you can just remove that one. Not a solution, but a handy workaround I've used myself as well.
I’m guessing you don’t use App folders, because if you did it would do this for you. The folder name the app is in is listed to the right of the result.
“Apple will let you put icons anywhere” rumor since iOS 9
But there’s a clear difference between stuff people want and rumour because they want it and the stuff that actually gets reported by analysts with a track record. When Gurman reports stuff like this you can take it to the bank.
Meanwhile the state of the notifications is burning. But cool I can move the icon now.
Their notification system bugs me more than anything else
I'll settle for recoloring and leaving gaps where I want, but I'd really prefer the native ability to just change the icon to whatever I want, a la an icon pack or something. Oh, and 5 icons on the home row while we're at it!
>5 icons on the home row One of the things I miss most about jail breaking.
Apple adds a basic feature that should've been added 10 years ago, that has been a jailbreak tweak for 15 years and fan boys will praise them. Fucking pathetic
Can we have Windows Phone like interface structure, vertical scrollable instead of horizontal?
That would be cool, given that iOS widgets behave very similar to the live tiles from Windows Phone. App drawer is to the right too like Windows Phone.
The only time I ever have to restart my phone is because a widget just goes black or stops updating at all.
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Windows phone was ahead of its time and I miss it so much. I want iPhone privacy without… iPhone. So stale after all these years
But HOW?! Next you're gonna tell me I can pause video while recording or flip between the front and rear camera.
thats an IOS 22 feature
Finally
I don't really care about the recoloring but it's cool for those who do care. The free placement of icons though will be a very welcome and long overdo feature making it easier to use one handed.
Very welcomed. Jobs probably rolling in his grave.
Jobs wanted to remove the app grid and a hippie UX designer said it would be too confusing. That same designer said a universal back button or gesture would be too confusing. I hate this man. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imran_Chaudhri
lmao of course it's the Humane guy.
Came here to say the same thing.
Holy shit, FINALLY.
Can they back landscape mode… I never owned a plus phone so I never got to experience it . Make landscape great again
Can we get more fucking icons to fit on the screen real estate?
You're going to love ios 42
they should have done this the moment phone screens got larger pinning to the top left is the dumbest possible place when you have a large device.
I'd love to say I'm looking forward to this but I was very hyped about iOS finally getting widgets and they're **still** implemented horribly.
The one thing I hate about these changes is I have to hear Android users come out of the woodwork to get their two cents in about how long Android has been able to do it.
Being able to place app icons wherever we want is such a long overdue and basic UI feature, glad it's being implemented. For one-handed phone use, being able to place apps in the bottom corners rather than defaulting to the top is critical. I think most phone developers have forgotten how often phones are used 1-handed and this is a very basic feature that should have been implemented a decade ago.
I would LOVE for them to bring back the ability for me to quickly organize my home screen on MacOS- I haven’t changed mine in years because the jiggly drag thing drives be insane. At the *very least least* give me a shortcut to send ALL apps to App Library, and then let me use App Library to drag apps out to home screen. Also I’d love the *option* to have home screen landscape work again; I really liked when the Plus phones worked like iPads if you had them mounted in landscape and needed to switch apps. It’s also pretty wild we have multitasking still.
Okay so just a question for folks more familiar with the Android landscape: When I had an Android phone about 9 years ago, the only way to do this was to download icon packs, which would inevitably be missing icons for many apps. Has that changed? Because my guess would be that Apple will leverage tech similar to the subject-finding tech they have for photos. Figure out where the icon is within the square, isolate it, and allow the icon and square background to be independently customized across all icons. Am I (at least theoretically) in the ballpark here?
How about something useful instead?
Recolor: why Put anywhere on the Home Screen: now that’s a pretty neat idea
Hold on a second... You couldn't put apps where you wanted?! (lifetime android user)
You can move them but they fill the screen from top to bottom whenever you add one to that page.
Year 2000 says hi.
Another feature for the ignored pile? They need new buddies for Stage Manager & NameDrop.
Finally. I want a Home Screen that I can use with gloves while motorcycling. I have been considering switching from iOS, but being able to space out icons could be a game changer
Honestly just happy we are moving away from the stupid ass icon shortcuts trend. Was such a pain in the ass to set up and completely unnecessary. And, also some of the icon packs were flat out ugly as hell.
What about renaming apps
Finally (placing the apps anywhere that is. With phone screens getting larger, this should have happened years ago. Now I won't have to fill the screen up with widgets just to get the icons bottom up (instead of top down).
Sounds like a terrible idea honestly (it’s a nightmare for developers like me)
iOS is basically turning into Android
I don’t think there is inherently a problem with more customization
I don’t either but they release the features like 10 years after android had it and all of a sudden is revolutionary.
1. No one said it’s revolutionary. 2. Android and iOS take features from each other pretty much equally
Case in point, see iOS lockscreen customization and then see the recent Samsung OneUI release that makes their lockscreen work almost exactly like the iOS version. Nothing wrong with this imo. Let both companies adapt the best of each other. At the end it’s us consumers that benefit from this sharing of ideas.
No one is saying it’s revolutionary. It’s just nice to finally get this feature. It’s the only thing I miss from android, being able to customize my Home Screen how I want.
It’s good to see OSes taking the best parts of each other. You can argue that it’s stealing but for consumers it means we get better products.
This is a good thing
I agree just point out the fact that it takes Apple so freaking long to do stuff like this.
Not quickly enough. I’m an Apple boy, have a MacBook, iPad, iPhone but the Home Screen/app drawer is a janky, unintuitive shitshow. Those disagreeing are delusional.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I cannot wait to make everything monochromatic. My background has been solid black for years now. Badge alerts almost completely muted across the board, apps I use infrequently are hidden. It’s night and day on my stress.
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Only Apple can have headlines that read 'can place apps anywhere'