If you love browsing Google Play for the coolest and newest apps, only to accumulate pages of them on your cell phone, you aren’t the only one.
From social media to gaming and editing tools, over the years we all gradually build up a gallery of apps that we can’t bear to part with - whether we use them or not. However, hoarding apps on your phone can interfere with screen navigation. If you’re having to search for it or swipe past hundreds of apps, you’re compromising on having a swift and efficient mobile user experience.
An easy way to reduce the amount of swiping it takes to eventually allocate the app you’re looking for is to group your apps into folders. There are a number of effective organisational strategies to choose from.
5 fun ways to organise your cell phone apps:
1. Actions folders
Sometimes it’s easier to recall which folder an app is placed in by recalling its function. Is a game, an editing tool, to do with your camera or picture-taking,watching videos or listening to music?
By creating action folders you can easily sort your apps into various folders with different titles. For instance, YouTube, Netflix, Showmax will all be grouped together under the category “Watch”.
2. Colour coordination
Logos are designed to be easily identifiable. If you closed your eyes right now and visualised the Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn and Drop Box app, you’d be able to tell that they all have their blue logos in common. If you’re more of a visual thinker, organising your apps by colour may be best suited for you. As a bonus, the end result will be a visually pleasing rainbow of apps.
3. Alphabetical order
We’re used to searching for things using the alphabet. Whether it is researching a term in an Encyclopedia or finding a book in the library, it’s a system we’re all used to engaging with. So why should your apps be any different? If you have a lot of apps this process can be very time-consuming. Some cell phones offer assistance with this.
4. Most to least used
There is no “right” way to organise your apps and sometimes the best system is to go by what you use most. You can achieve this set up by assigning each home screen to a level of frequency. The first screen can include the items you use religiously and the following one's will decrease in frequency of app visits. For instance, apps like “call” or “camera” would be best suited for your home page because you may need them on a whim - there’s nothing more frustrating than missing a picture-worthy moment because you can’t find your camera app.
5. Emoji folders
There’s an emoji for everything these days, so why not make use of their visually easy to understand meanings and use them to label your folders. The headphone emoji could be used for folders containing all things music related, the video game console folder can store all your games and any emoji of food could house all your delivery apps. This method works well for when you need to find a folder at a glance and don’t have time to read the titles of each folder.
Delete unused apps
Hoarding apps not only crowds your phone, it also slows it down by using up unnecessary amounts of battery life and data for updates and notifications. To streamline your cell phone navigation, and have an uncluttered interface, trim down on the number of apps you have on your phone. If you have no use for it, or haven't visited that app in the past few weeks, maybe it’s time to uninstall?