I thought perhaps I would make sharing my home screen setup a regular thing. Back in January, I posted my then-current setup. Four months later, my home screen is a bit different, so here’s an update.
My current home screen (select to view a larger version):
These are the apps I use the most or I want easy access to. As for my wallpaper, this is a wallpaper I’ve been using for years (I have no idea where I originally found it) (and actually it’s too small for iPhone X, but I’m using it anyway). The subtle grays and textures are pleasing and allow the icons to pop. Below are a few notes on some of the apps I have on my home screen.
Tweetbot
For me, this is the gold standard of what a Twitter app should be. With thoughtful design and interactions, timeline sync, and more, Tweetbot is an all-around terrific Twitter app. I hope Twitter’s recent API news doesn’t make Tweetbot—and all third-party Twitter clients—unusable.
Timr
I use Toggl to track my time on various tasks and projects. I wrote previously how I used Workflow to start and stop time entries because the official Toggl app isn’t for me. Wanting more functionality like editing or deleting time entries, I decided to make my own Toggl app since their API is rather robust. I don’t know ultimately what the roadmap for Timr is, but for now it offers me a better way to interface with Toggl—and, unlike the official app, works natively on iPad and with iPad multitasking too!
Partly Sunny
I’m the developer and designer behind this app that shows your weather in quick glances and detailed looks. If you just want a quick glance at what’s happening, Partly Sunny can show that. If you want a more detailed look at what’s happening in the next hour, day, or week, Partly Sunny can show that too. Whichever you prefer, everything is meant to feel at home on iOS. Some of the key features include: customizable hourly graphs; customizable conditions in current, hourly, and daily forecasts; interactive radar; a widget; and a dark mode.
Workflow
This is an indispensable app for connecting and combining apps and actions to automate tasks—thus saving me time and effort. I have workflows for sharing photos, adding calendar entries and reminders, adding Trello cards and attachments, adding Apple device frames to screenshots, parsing email receipts, and more. Sure, I could do all those things without Workflow, but Workflow makes those things easier. Plus, I love making workflows. I wish I could find a job as a “Senior Workflow Builder”.
Things
I recently started using Things to keep track of my to-dos. Its design is striking for two reasons: it’s beautiful and it’s calming—meaning it doesn’t stress me out to use it. Plus, there’s no concept of overdue in Things, so it’s never shaming me for not completing a task. The cost of the apps may be a dealbreaker for many (there’s a separate app for iPad), but Things is more than enjoyable and useful enough to justify the price.
Momento
This is a journaling app that collects manual thoughts and media and also automatically imports tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts, and other social-media feeds. I’ve been using Momento for several years now, and looking back at memories and what I was doing, thinking, and even tweeting years ago is something special.
Transit
I enjoy trying different apps to see how they solve the same problems (see: Things), and transportation apps are no exception. In Los Angeles where many public-transportation lines run infrequently or have earlier-than-ideal-end-of-service times, Transit has some key features for me: its active-trip mode lets me know when to get off, whether or not I’ll make a connection, and what my ETA is.
lire
In the previous post, I had just started using this RSS reader, and here I am four months later still using it. Still one of the most notable things for me is it feels at home in iOS 11 with its design choices. Another notable thing is it can fetch the full text of articles that get truncated in feeds.
Apollo
Here’s a bar graph comparing my Reddit usage before Apollo was released vs after: ▁ ▇. With its many customization options, gestures, and the jump bar, it’s such a delight to use (it’s easy to tell much thought and love has been poured into the app). And like lire, it feels at home on iOS.
Trello
Trello helps me organize Partly Sunny to-do lists, feature requests, and bug reports as well as plan out future updates. I started using it beyond project tracking too. This year, I embarked on a 365-day photo project where I take and share a photo each day. I have a Trello board to save sort-of photo drafts; if I want to revisit something for a future photo, I take a photo and add it to this board so I don’t forget about it.
Halide
A polished, powerful manual camera app. One of my favorite features is when in manual-focus mode, I can turn on highlighting of what’s in focus in the frame—immensely helpful when I’m trying to compose a shot with a particular thing in focus.
And in my Dock:
Cesium
Since iOS 9, the default iOS Music app hasn’t been for me. Thankfully, Cesium exists with its customizable tabbed navigation, powerful list sorting and grouping, track details, queue editing, dark theme, and more. (I’m using an alternate icon to match the iOS 7 Music app color.)
Drafts
This app is great for when I need to jot down a quick note. From there, I can decide what to do with it later or immediately perform an action or set of actions on the text and send it somewhere else like a message, a tweet, or elsewhere with a URL scheme. The recent Drafts 5 (I’m using an alternate icon) brought a powerful new scripting environment giving me further options for processing text—and giving me opportunities to brush up on my Javascript.
So that’s my home screen setup. May 2018 edition. As I said last time, I like to tinker, so no doubt this will get tweaked soon. What does your home screen look like? Come find me on Twitter and let me know!
