The “Apps Library”, alongside the arrival of widgets, is a major innovation for the iOS 14 home screen. The user, overwhelmed by the accumulation of apps and screens to scroll , can turn to a new method of organization delegated in large part to the system.
First of all, if the operation of the home screens as we know it since the beginnings of the iPhone suits you, iOS 14 does not force your hand to change it. You can continue to do as before and, at most, just add one or more widgets among your icons and screens.
Then, this “App Library” (like the new widget management) is exclusive to the iPhone. iPadOS 14 does not take advantage of it and Apple has not hinted that there will be any developments on this point until the final version (read WWDC 2020: Apple forgot the iPad again this year).
View the App Library
The “App Library” is similar to the “Applications” folder on Mac and the apps you want to keep on the Home screen would be their aliases. To display the App Library, first activate the “Change home screen” mode by pressing and holding an icon or a blank area of the home screen, and touch l indicator of the number of pages that overlooks the Dock.
iOS displays a reduced version of your icon pages (right capture) and you can deactivate those of your choice. The main thing is to keep at least one page. Once the operation validated, that you have kept only one page, or two, or three, following them iOS will display the new view of the Library of apps. If, for example, you only have one home page left, a side gesture to the left will immediately reveal the new view and its storage.
Automatic storage
In this Library, iOS is the boss. By that you mean that you have almost no control over anything. Each folder is created, named and filled automatically according to the categories in which these apps appear on the App Store. Thus, the game apps have their file but the games obtained via Apple Arcade are grouped in another specific good. These two categories of apps do not mix. Cannot transfer Apple Arcade games to the Games folder to have only one on the screen.
And what about webapps and more generally links created on the home screen via Safari? Well they are added to the home page (or on a new page if there is no more space elsewhere). Not being iOS apps, these items don’t appear in the App Library, it doesn’t have a special category for them.
At the top of this view, there are two irremovable files. The first, called “Suggestions”, offers 4 apps that change over the course of the day and circumstances (these are not necessarily those that Siri will offer when you open the iOS search engine).
Its neighbor, “Recent Additions” is, as its name suggests, a folder where up to 32 recently downloaded apps appear. See them as aliases since they will also be automatically placed in the folders of their respective category.
In this regard, in the “Home screen” settings of iOS, you can choose whether the downloaded apps arrive directly in the folders of the App Library or whether they appear on your home page (and if the space is missing, a new page will be created). This is also where you can choose to hide the notification pads to avoid the Christmas wreath effect.
Inside the files of the Library, the apps are necessarily arranged in alphabetical order, you do not have the hand to reorder them. Leaving the home page, the Library stores itself, the user is relieved of this task.
But if you observe the reduced view of these folders, you will see that apps that are at the very end of the list inside, nevertheless appear prominently outside: example with “WhatsApp”, “Skype” and “Slack ” to the left. It is iOS that chooses to highlight the apps most likely to interest you or recently used.
Because in these reduced folder views, apps whose icon is displayed in full size can be opened with a single tap. While the block of mini icons means that there are more apps in this folder than it can be displayed in this big box: you then need to tap on this block of small icons to open the folder and then access the desired application.
In the overview of the Apps Library, you cannot move the folders between them either. On the other hand, iOS can play the elevator and make files go up at the expense of others, if it considers that they contain apps that you are going to need at a particular time of the day.
Find an app
To find an app that you don’t use often and that iOS won’t put before itself, the Library screen has a search engine coupled with an alphabetical list display. It is summoned with a slide down.
The presence status of the app – if it is on iCloud but not stored locally – is indicated by the cloud icon. This list view is specific to the Library, it is still possible to search for an app from the Siri engine accessible from the home screen.
In this alphabetical list of apps, you can touch and drag an icon to the left side of the screen to take it to your home screen (also possible from a folder) or delete an app.
Delete an app
When the App Library is activated, there are two ways to delete an app. If it’s on your home page, iOS gives you the choice of removing it completely from the iPhone or just from that page. In the latter case, the app remains in its folder in the Library (as if, on the macOS desktop, you delete the alias of an item from the “Applications” folder). But if you act on an app from its Library folder, or from the alphabetical list, there will be no choice but to delete it from the iPhone.
This new storage interface can take some time to adapt to master the logic. For example, the icon of an app can be visible in four different places: on the home page, in its library folder and perhaps in the two dynamic folders (“Recent additions” and “Suggestions”) . But if we start from the idea that the files of the Library contain the app itself and that elsewhere they are, in a way, only its aliases, then things become clearer.
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