Eight takes on what to do with your last iPhone home screen
The last home screen: what do you use it for? Depending on how many apps you have installed and how you have them organized, the last home screen can be a simple three swipes away, or a very long “are we there yet” 10 swipes away from your first one. The following is some quick feedback on how our team treats this area and the responses range from derelict dumping ground to triage area to gaming cubby hole.
Brad
I use the last screen as the triage area. Whenever I get a new app it ends up on the last screen because most of the others are full. It stays there until I have a chance to play with it and see if it is worth keeping. If it makes the cut it moves up the list and replaces another app I have lost interest in otherwise it hits the recycle bin.
Brandon S
This one all depends on if I’m running jailbroken or not. If I don’t have the jailbreak apps (SBSettings / Categories) to help me turn off and organize all the icons, then the last homescreen becomes the crap Apple won’t let me turn off graveyard… like contacts, stocks, compass, voicememos. Everyday I’m thankfully for the jailbreak community for giving us back control of the device. Anyway, if I do have the phone jailbroken, then the last screen is reserved for apps I’m working on. These could be apps I’m developing or apps I’ve just downloaded and not confident yet of their permanent place on my device. I call it my test screen.
Frank
I feel the same way as Brandon. It depends if my phone is jailbroken or not… If my phone is not jailbroken, the last home screen contains most of the stock apps: Contacts, Weather, Stocks, Compass…etc. I tend to put apps I will never use on that page. Now jailbroken is a different story. The first thing I do is hide all the stock apps I don’t use. Then I tend to use the last page as a “testing” center for apps. As of now, my last home page is filled with mostly games that I have only played once or twice. If I don’t use it after a period of time I will delete it to make room for more. My one wish for 4.0 is to give us a setting to hide certain stock apps, but I am not too sure if that would ever happen. It’s a hopeful thought.
Patrick
I have been using PogoPlank to replace springboard for several months now, so I just have one home screen and no need to demote apps I rarely use. When I did have a last home screen, my demoted apps were similar to those mentioned by others already – built-in apps that I can’t remove (Weather etc), utilities I don’t have to mess with often (Boxcar, BNO News, Winterboard, Prowl etc), and sometimes an app or two that were being considered for being banished completely.
Josh
My last home screen has become the place where I store all the “settings” or “extensions” icons — things like Backgrounder and Winterboard. Apps that provide functionality to to iPhone but don’t require my interaction with on a daily basis. Any app who’s sole purpose is to send a push alert, like Boxcar and LetMeKnow, will also end up here. I also keep my “app store” apps — the official app store, as well as Cydia and Rock — on the top row of my last home screen, even though I use them quite a bit. However, I suppose because I use OverBoard to jump directly to the particular home screen I want, the location of the app store icons isn’t really an issue for me. It’s more just where they’ve ended up and where I’m used to looking for them.
Jay
Mine turns into apps that they boys play with.
So although I haven’t migrated the unused native apps (never even occurred to me), the few opening pages are my productivity & frequently used apps. The last screen are those games I don’t care for, but the boys play.
Thomas
For me, the last home screen is home to all of the default iPhone apps I no longer use. Some of them, like YouTube, can’t be hidden. Others, like notes, are just there because I’m too lazy to keep hiding icons via SBSettings. I suppose it doesn’t matter which iPhone pages go unused since I have OverBoard to instantly move to any page I want to access, but using the last page for unused default apps works nicely for when I want to shift icons around with iTunes. As for the unused apps that aren’t part of the default suite…those have been deleted.
Diego
Same for me, I fill it with all the default apps and the “setting”
apps like snappy preferences
I used to do what most of you said and put all the 'settings' apps and unused iPhone apps on the last screen. Now I have all the settings apps in a Stack and I hide the unused apps. Now my last screen is usually games or other apps I've downloaded but haven't yet given a try. Seems to be full most the time these days with all the sites like FreeAppADay.
P.S. Why does JAiPB randomly show me the mobile version of the site sometimes even when I'm on my computer? This article is the mobile version while the main page is 'normal'. I've seen the main page show up as mobile sometimes too.
On the P.S. portion – I wasn't aware of this issue until yesterday afternoon when a reader mentioned it to me on Twitter. I deleted / refreshed our site's cache at that point and it appeared to be resolved. This morning I cannot recreate the issue on my MacBook in Safari or Chrome, but I am seeing in Mobile Safari that the mobile theme cannot be turned off. I'm talking to the plugin creators to see if this is a known issue / what fixes are available or coming soon. Sorry for the hassle this is causing.
I’m surprised so many people use the last screen for new apps that they don’t have placement for yet. It seems like that method would make it take longer to decide what to do with the app. Personally, I keep the bottom row of my 2nd page reserved for new apps. They go there until I decide what to do with them. That way, they are easily accessible and it almost forces me to place them or get rid of them since they are more upfront.
Like Jay, my last page is reserved for my son, but he tends to navigate all over the place anyway.
I am experiencing the same behavior that sysrage mentioned. My page is the mobile version. Also, quite often on my iPhone, the mobile version does not display comments and does not allow me to toggle to the non-mobile version.
Last page is the limbo page for me as well. Since each of my 5 screens is relatively filled up and pretty structured, everything new, temporary (i.e. the TurboTax Taxcaster app), or on its way out goes there. I also put webpage bookmarks there.
However, another reason for this is also that i use Glass Orb Color and I like all my icons to be skinned. This keeps new programs which dont usually have skinned icons yet off to the side until I get around to assigning them an icon in iFile.
Nice theme in that screen shot. Any chance of knowing which one is it?
that'd be Matte Nano
Can you please tell me the gmail app’s name who’s on your dash board?!
mostly unused application are placed on back screen
http://www.fixpod.com.au
That'd be Gmail Push, but i modded the icon to be the one for the Gmail web app.