Tips for organizing your phone's homescreen

If your phone screen looks like there was an explosion at the icon factory, it might be time to consider some organization tips.

We're not here to judge if your phone’s homepage is a jumble of icons arranged randomly. And while it might be easy to find the apps you use all the time, if you're having trouble finding anything else, here are some ways you might like organizing your phone.

The Visual Learner

For the artistic types out there, there’s little more aesthetically pleasing than organizing your icons by color. Interestingly, though, this might also be a very efficient way of remembering where your apps are. Our brains are hard-wired to remember color, so it might actually be easier on our brains to organize apps sorted like this:

The Voracious Reader

Colors are good, and all but some of us are all about letters. For those folks, there’s good ol’ alphabetical, the gold standard of organization methods. What’s a little frustrating about listing your apps alphabetically is there’s no way to do it easily. You’d think there would be, right?  

If you’re on an older version of Android than Android 12, it’s easy: Tap on the app icon, then tap the drop down menu, then tap Display layout then alphabetical list. Done! If you’re on Android 12 you have to organize ‘em yourself. (Sorry, we'd change it if we could!)

For you iOS users, it’s hidden in the settings menu. First, open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap General. Then tap Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout.

The Folder Fond  

Some people are more practical, and for them, the folder method is a good way to go. Put all your music apps in a folder called Music and all your games in a folder called Games. Easy, right? Of course, you might be more of a verb person. In that case, you can go with putting all your video apps into Watch and all your music apps in Listen. Games go into Play, and so on until you run out of verbs or apps.

On both iOS and Android, you can make a folder just by dragging one app icon on top of another one.

Let us know how you organize your homepage in the comments!