iPhone Home Screen Tour

Hello and welcome to the tour of my iPhone home screen.

My iPad and Watch are not participating because there’s nothing all that interesting there, but here’s what I’ve got on the device I definitely use the most:

The apps on my home screen—excluding the two folders and the dock—are sorted alphabetically. Since I occasionally move things to and from the home screen, this keeps me on my toes. I also then constantly open the wrong app for a while afterward. Something, something variety is the spice of life?

Row 1:

• Brivo Pass — This is the system my apartment complex uses and the app lets me open various gates and doors throughout the property. My most frequent use case is opening garage gates during dog walks, which I can actually do by yelling at my watch.
• Calendar — Pretty self-explanatory, really. I live by my calendar, so if it’s on the cal, I’m your pal, but otherwise I’m basically guaranteed not to be there. I’d like to go back to Fantastical, but it’s not approved for work use, rendering it a non-starter, sadly.
• Desert Golfing — Basically the only game I play these days. I’m on my Nth playthrough at this point. IYKYK.
• Fastmail — All my non-work email goes through Fastmail, and their app works just fine for me. I only use it for email—so not for calendar, notes, contacts, files, and whatever else they offer.

Row 2:

• Firefox — My browser of choice on all platforms, for better or for worse. (Yes, I’m aware all iOS browsers use the same rendering engine stateside.)
• Firefox Focus — Content blocker + sessionless single-tab private mode browser, and indispensable on iOS and iPadOS.
• Ivory — My Mastodon client of choice on all platforms.
• Libby — Access audiobooks and e-books from libraries, aka for freebies. Libby kicks butt.

Row 3:

• Apple Maps — Yes, I use Apple Maps. Yes, I’ve used Google Maps and Waze. No, they’re not necessarily better. Yes, I’m privileged to live in a place well covered by Apple Maps.
• Apple Notes — My wife and I occasionally share notes, and most notably she keeps a running list of packages I need to retrieve from our apartment complex’s package room, which is super helpful.
• Obsidian — My actual notes, lulz. I’m writing this very post in Obsidian, though on macOS.
• Overcast — My podcast player of choice, I think for about a decade at this point. Gets a lot of exercise, usually multiple times per day.

Row 4:

• Phone — I have calls from unknown callers blocked on the OS level, so it’s handy to see the badge denoting all the spam calls I’ve avoided, but also sadly all the spam voicemails I need to delete. I get multiple per day, someone plz fix this.
• Photos — My phone arguably primarily serves as a camera, so yeah, kinda use this a lot.
• Reeder Classic — My feed reader, backed by Feedbin for sync purposes. It’s quite good, and especially on iPadOS, where I use it far more.
• Settings — I find myself changing stuff in Settings often enough to warrant a home screen slot. I wouldn’t have thought so, but it’s undeniably true.

Row 5:

• Slack — This is my non-work Slack instance—work gets the EMM variant dedicated to it—and I don’t use it a ton these days. Most of the active communities I patronize have moved to Discord.
• Telegram — I somewhat frequently participate in one community that uses Telegram groups, and would probably often forget to check in if I didn’t see the app icon all the time, so here it is.
• WhatsApp — Fortunately I don’t use WhatsApp much, but it’s where one particular group chat lives.
• YNAB — The only reason I’m not entirely bankrupt, honestly. YNAB is pretty dang good.

Row 6:

• YouTube — My only TV these days. I don’t use it much on mobile, to be fair.
• YouTube Music — After ditching Spotify, this became my refuge. (Yes, I’m aware it has plenty of its own problems.)
• 🚣‍♂️ — Fitness, under the man rowing icon because that’s my primary activity these days:
  • Strava — Largely a vestige of my more dedicated cycling efforts over the years, and I don’t fire it up much any more. The experience is kinda crap, as they keep pushing unwanted features. Surprisingly user-hostile for a platform that used to be the exact opposite.
  • ErgData — Concept2 makes my rowing machine and the official app lets me track workouts on their platform, as well as program them into the rower itself a bit more easily than the built-in monitor.
  • C2 2k — This is not an app, but a shortcut to the web page for the Concept2 2k training plan I’m currently following.
• 💩 — Social media crap, under the poop icon because that’s what it’s become to me:
  • Facebook — I literally have it only for Marketplace. I hate that Craigslist basically died and everyone went to FB, but that’s the reality.
  • Facebook Messenger — I only use it to talk to people on Marketplace.
  • Instagram — I really want to still enjoy Instagram, but it just isn’t the case most of the time. My use thereof is barely above nil at this point.

Dock:

• Things 3 — My favorite to-do app, super legit. I happily use it on all platforms.
• Discord — This is where my frenz are, basically!
• Signal — Some important group chats are on Signal, which is cool.
• Apple Messages — Texting—iMessage and SMS—is my primary means of communication these days.

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