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Do you remember my older article on how to organize anything?
I've applied it to my phone springboard, resulting in two very organized screens:
Since iOS doesn't offer anything like an application drawer, I am forced to organize all applications visible at once (that's something I wish Apple could borrow from Android, as an optional feature).
1. There are 2, or 3 screens: first screen contains my most frequently used applications, second screen contains folders with everything else, and finally the optional screen would be occupied by games (no folders then).
2. Folders can store only 9 apps, i.e. no scrollable folders.
3. Everything (on both screens, and inside folders) is sorted alphabetically, which makes it extremely easy to find whatever I'm looking for.
4. Folders are named in a semantic, contextual way, e.g. "Office" contains everything I need to run my office, while "Reading" contains all my book, news, and text management apps.
The biggest benefit of my organization system is the fact, that adding new apps, or removing unused ones, doesn't result in drastic changes (it's just one position in the screen, or in a folder). That makes my muscle memory adjust to the change in minutes, rather than hours or days if I didn't organize my springboard.
Second benefit is the searchability of my apps—it's either one of the apps that I'm using multiple time a day, or it's in a specific context folder, e.g. "Photography". Everything is is max one swipe, and 2 taps away!
And finally, since I organize my springboard, I know which apps are used, and which are not. No more cognitive overload caused by multiple apps doing same thing.