Rearranging the iPhone's home screen icons, including moving them to other screens, is one of the major ways you can customize your phone. From storing apps in folders to putting your favorites on the first screen so you can access them easily, rearranging your iPhone home screen is useful, easy, and fun. And, because both the iPod touch and iPad run the same operating system, you can use these tips to customize them, too. Here’s how it all works.
Rearranging iPhone Icons
To rearrange the iPhone’s home screen icons, do the following:
- Tap on an app and hold your finger on it until the icons start shaking
- When the icons are shaking, you can rearrange them in whatever order you want (icons have to swap places on the screen, though. They can’t be moved to empty space)
- To move the icon to a new screen, called a page, just drag the icon off the screen to the right or left and let it go when the new page appears
- When the icon is in the place you want it, let it go
- To save the changes, tap the home button
Many iPhone Pages
Before iOS 1.1.3, the iPhone had just one page of apps; now you can have up to 9. This allows you to fill your iPhone screens full of apps and web clips and scroll through those pages in an easy-to-manage way. Items in the dock are consistent across all screens and don’t change.
You can create new pages by dragging apps off the current last page on your iPhone home screen. A new page will be created. Let the app go there and click the home button to save the new page. You can also create new pages when your iPhone is synced to your computer.
Scrolling Through iPhone Pages
If you have more than one page of icons on your iPad or iPhone after rearranging them, you can scroll through the pages either by flicking them left or right, just like in CoverFlow, or by tapping the white dots just above the dock. The white icons indicate how many pages you have.
iPhone Folders
You can store iPhone apps or web clips in folders. Each folder can contain up to 12 apps on the iPhone and 20 apps on the iPad. You can move and arrange folders in the same way as apps. Learn how to create iPhone folders.
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