I really enjoy knowing how other people organize things. Whether it’s their calendars, or laptops, or closets, I am immediately interested in how people get things arranged. I’ve watched a few videos on YouTube recently about what people have on their iPhone and it inspired me to share how I’ve had my phone laid out recently. I wrote about this in 2014 and 2015, so it’s high time for an update.
I keep my apps on two pages, with folders for organization. I also like to have a pretty plain background so the apps will stand out clearly. While I do switch out my lock screen background frequently, I’ve been coming back to this marble background for a few years now for my home screen.
Dock
My three most used apps are messages, phone (duh), and calendar, so I keep those three on the dock.
Page 1
On the first page I keep Spotify, Gmail (for personal and freelance communications), Photos, Settings, Clock, Chrome, Weather, Mail (for work communication), Trello (my list making and task organization app for work and personal life), and Evernote (work and personal notes).
I also have a folder for all of my transportation apps including NJTransit, a subway map, my bus schedule, Waze and Google maps, Uber, Via, and Lyft.
This is the most paired down I have had my first page in recent memory. It’s an attempt to keep my off my phone and to hide the more fun social apps from myself on page two. I’ve yet to figure out if this will work, but I’m giving it a try.
Page 2
Here come all the folders. My first folder has all of my work apps. Most I do not use on a regular basis, but have to be on the phone since it’s a company device. I do use Slack a ton and really like ScanBizCards. ScanBizCards allows me to keep all of the business cards I receive digitally instead of in physical stacks.
The next folder is my “extras” that come on the phone from Apple, but that I don’t use on a regular basis. I threw my Hamilton app in there where I enter for free tickets every day because I wasn’t quite sure where else to put it.
After that we have my travel folder with airline apps for my boarding passes and hotel apps because I have become the type of person that shows up to a new place and books the hotel when I arrive. So spontaneous.
Next we have money with my banking and investing apps. I also threw in CVS and Target because I use the apps to get discounts.
The following folder has photo and social apps. Like I mentioned before, this is a new experiment to see if hiding the apps makes a difference in my usage level. I’ll have to report back on the usefulness of this tactic.
Life360 is an app that lets my family know where I am, MoviePass is a disaster but I already paid for up until March, so there it stays, Podcasts is self explanatory, and then we have Kindle and Goodreads for all of my reading needs.
There it is! A minimalistic approach to phone organization, keeping just the essentials (and a few extras for fun).
How do you organize your phone? Are you a folder fan?
-AJF
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