All the Apps on My Home screen and How I Use Them
I’ve had an iPhone since 2008. It’s become one of the most important tools I own. I use it for everything. Well, not everything. But close.
Like a lot of executives, when the iPhone debuted I used a BlackBerry. At the time, it was the perfect tool for email, contacts, my calendar, and limited Web browsing. If I wanted to sync my calendar and contacts with an iPhone, I had to manually connect it to my MacBook Pro. Why would I trade?
Seems like a silly question today.
Today I use my iPhone to keep track of most of the moving parts of my complicated personal and professional life. And I’ve optimized my home screen to put everything I need within one or two clicks. Continue reading to know what’s on my iphone 12 Pro Max.
What’s on my iPhone 12 Pro Max?
Here’s a list of the apps I currently have on my home screen:
Settings. I keep the default Settings app in a prominent position, so I can easily manage Airplane Mode, Notifications, Do Not Disturb mode, Wireless and Bluetooth connections, and so on.
1Password. I store all my passwords in this handy little app. With the newest version, I can even share passwords securely with my team.
App Store. I like keeping my apps up-to-date. I also like to experiment with new apps, so I keep this one where I can easily find it.
Wallet. Having this app on the top row makes it easy to manage my cards, tickets, coupons, and tickets in one place. I really hope Apple gets more services on board because this has the potential to eliminate my actual wallet.
Music. Apple Music, because I unashamedly live in an Apple world. In my living room I have a HomePod and an Apple TV, I wear an Apple Watch and my wife has an iPhone. Generally, I like it — even if it is far from perfect. There’s some great playlists and the generated ones like My Favourites mix are pretty good.
Google Drive. I keep all my documents locally on my desktop and in the cloud on Google Drive. My team also uses it for our Digital Assets Repository (DAR) or shared files.
Dropbox. Some of our vendors use Dropbox to share files, so I keep this app handy in order to access them.
Fantastical. My calendar program of choice. It’s linked to my various Google calendars. It has far more bells and whistles than the standard iOS calendar app.
Ulysses The text-editing app that I use to write all my iPhoneGeeks articles. It employs the principles of Markdown syntax, but also allows me to add in images and write captions, add notes, and tags my articles/notes/story chapters. It is happy dealing with many thousands of documents, and everything is kept inside the app, so i never have to worry about anything.
Workflowy. This is an outliner on steroids. I mostly use it on my desktop to create new content. It is where everything starts. I use it on my iPhone to reference those outlines.
Safari. This is my browser of choice on all my devices. Sessions shared across macOS and handoff is useful feature.
Way of Life. This is the habit tracker I’m currently using to track my habit goals. It is super easy to use. It allows me to skip days as well as track trends.
Stocks. This is the standard-issue stock app. I usually check in once a day or so to see how the market is doing.
Calculator. This is also the standard-issue calculator app. Nothing fancy here, just a simple tool to crunch numbers. Well I’ve tried others, but not found anything greatly better so far.
CARROT Weather. To be honest, I’m not sure why I downloaded this weather app, but I prefer it to Apple’s default.
White Noise. If you have followed me for any length of time, you know I’m a napper. I use this app to mask background noise so I can sleep. I also use it for nighttime sleep when I’m traveling.
Waze. I adore this app. In my opinion, it’s the best GPS program on the market, because it crowdsources traffic patterns and reroutes you around obstacles and congestion.
ADT Pulse. This app simply gives me the ability to monitor my in-home security system, including security cameras. I can also activate and deactivate the alarm system remotely.
Photos. My photos are becoming more and more important to me with each passing year. I like to have them here for easy reference. I was using Lightroom, but I like the simplicity of this app on all my devices.
Camera. Even though I have a couple of big expensive DSLR cameras, I find that I take more and more pictures on my iPhone. The quality is great, and it’s the one camera I always have with me.
Phone. I used to have this app on my home row, but I so rarely make or receive phone calls I moved it. Instead, I almost always make video calls using Zoom on my desktop.
Input. This is a folder for all the apps I use to gather input: Google News for catching up on what’s happening, Fiery Feeds for reading blogs, Kindle for reading the occasional book, Audible for listening to audio books, and Downcast for podcasts.
Social. This is a folder for my main social media apps: Twitterrific. The best Twitter client there is. Twitterrific is easy to use, fast and with a ton of cool features.
LinkedIn. It pains me a bit to have this here, but it is a necessity. LinkedIn is filled with recruiters but it’s a nice platform to make business connections and often I find myself dipping in to help me find people I’ve met at networking events etc.
Instagram. I use it mainly for business but I do find myself more and more posting the odd story on my personal account and using it to procrastinate.
Reddit. I use this to subscribe to tech and startup subreddits which have great content.
That covers everything above the home row. Here’s what I keep there; these are the apps I use most of all.
Slack. We use this app with our team instead of email. There is no app I use more on my phone or on my desktop than this one. It’s been a game-changer.
WhatsApp. Though I am not a huge fan of chatting, it’s the primary way I chat to people without iPhones. Most of my messaging is through either Slack or iMessage but there some people in the world that don’t use either and for them the fall back is WhatsApp.
Mail. I use email as little as possible these days. In fact, I only use it with people outside my company. It used to be the first item on the home row, because I used it so much. That’s not currently the case.
Nozbe. I use Nozbe for task management. It’s available on all my devices, and it’s one of those apps that just keeps getting better with age.
What’s on your iPhone?
What do you have on your iPhone? I always find it interesting to see how other people work their technology. Drop us a comment and let us know.