(Pocket-lint) - Apple introduced a feature called App Library on iOS 14 in September 2020 to help you manage the sometimes unwieldy array of apps that you've downloaded.
App Library offers the potential to change the way you access apps on your iPhone and makes it easier to find your favourite or most-used apps quickly. It certainly helps avoid those painstaking moments of remembering which Home Screen or folder you've put the app you need to use at that moment in time.
- How to add widgets to your iPhone home screen
You can't turn the App Library feature off, but you can still minimise its usage if you aren't ready to embrace it. As we've found though, once you start to use it, you'll use it more and more and wonder how you ever coped without it.
What is Apple's App Library and where to find it?
The App Library is found by swiping right to left on the last Home Screen page that currently holds apps on your iPhone. That could be two swipes, it could be dozens of swipes, and will depend on how many apps you have installed on your Apple iPhone or iPad. It's worth noting that App Library is only available on iPads running iPadOS 15, which launched in September 2021.
As the name suggests, all your apps are stored in the App Library and are presented in a number of folders that are based on the categories found in the App Store. So, Instagram and Twitter are in the Social folder for example, while YouTube is in Entertainment.
Pocket-lint
Best smartphone 2022: We test, rate and rank the top mobile phones available to buy By Chris Hall · 30 September 2022
What are the best smartphones available in 2022? We test the latest options from Google, Apple, Samsung, Oppo and many more to find out.
Where do newly downloaded Apps go?
When running iOS 14 or later on iPhone, or iPadOS 15 or later on iPad, you'll notice that the first app you download afterwards won't appear on the Home screen as they've always done previously.
That's because newly downloaded apps don't appear on the Home Screen anymore, but instead appear in the Recently Downloaded folder in the App Library instead.
It's puzzling at first, but can be fixed in the Settings app if you don't like that approach. To make sure newly downloaded apps are still added to your Home Screen go to Settings > Home Screen and tick whether you want the newly downloaded app to either "Add to Home Screen" or "App Library Only".
You'll also find that this page allows you to set whether you want to show Notification Badges in the App Library. We've tried it and it gets very cluttered very quickly as if it's not a popular app it doesn't show which app the notification is for.
App icons without names
On the whole, the App Library is easy to use and very logical in its approach, but something to bear in mind if you plan to use it a lot is that it removes the names of your apps on that first glance.
That might be okay for popular apps with memorable icons - Twitter or Instagram – but it's not very helpful for games or apps that don't really have a logo that you'll recognise.
Expect some app icons to change as they realise that as a tiny square, the app logo doesn't really shout as to what is actually is.
Writing by Stuart Miles. Editing by Britta O'Boyle.