One of the most popular features of the original HTC One and the new HTC One M8 is Blinkfeed. HTC’s own proprietary app designed to bring news, sports, social and even email updates entirely to users’ home screens.
While the HTC One M8’s beautiful hardware and aluminum design is one of the main attractions, the subtle changes and improvements in Android 4.4 KitKat and Sense UI 6.0 really bring the experience home for many users. Blinkfeed is one of our favorite features, but not everyone wants it to take over their home screen.
When it comes to modifying or customizing a smartphone, there are tons of options available. The HTC One M8 is a popular smartphone available in multiple colors across all carriers, and Android as a whole allows for a lot of customization which can be confusing at times. If you want simple instructions to remove Blinkfeed from your device, read on after the break.
Blinkfeed is like an RSS feed or news aggregator that brings you news articles, sports alerts or updates, social networking updates and betting, weather alerts and more. It’s extremely helpful, but we know exactly what to do if you want to get rid of it.
One thing that causes users a lot of frustration is pressing the home button on the HTC One M8 takes you to Blinkfeed rather than your main Android screen that most users see. The page you are the Google Search widget for and the most popular apps often get stuck. As a result, you are constantly scrolling from Blinkfeed to your homepage. Below, we’ll explain how to change your home screen to no Blinkfeed and completely disable the service and app.
Instructions
As the title suggests, if you want to disable Blinkfeed entirely or even change it to not be the default screen you see when you get home, the instructions below do both. One area will allow you to switch home screens extremely simply and also remove the entire home screen or Blinkfeed with one bottom tap.
Long press any blank area of the screen when not in Blinkfeed and you will see a familiar popup on Android for home screen options. Manage wallpaper, Apps & widgets or Home screen pages. The latter will both work, but select “Manage home screen pages”.
From here it’s actually just two taps away and Blinkfeed will be gone forever. Or until you put it back, of course. Make sure you scroll down and tap the Blinkfeed page (not your home page, otherwise you’ll delete everything) and then hit the remove button. Below you will see that the green box is now around the Blinkfeed page instead of my home screen, and a quick tap of remove gets rid of it. It’s that easy!
Alternatively, users can pinch with two fingers on any screen to go to the homepage apps and widgets “edit” screen. From here you can add new widgets and customize your device, but long-press and swipe to trash to get the Blinkfeed home screen. Gone. Same as above, just a different method. Whichever is easier for you.
As promised above, some users don’t want to remove HTC Blinkfeed entirely because they love the alerts and information on your face at a glance, but they want to disable it from being their main home screen. When you tap the homepage you want to go to your home screen full of your favorite apps, not Blinkfeed, so let’s do that too.
When you enter the same menu we discussed above (with a pinch or long-press and selecting Home screen settings), you will see that there is a “Set as Home” option to the left of the uninstall button we mentioned. earlier. Long press on an empty area of the screen, select Home screen settings, tap your chosen home screen to highlight (as shown below) and tap Set as Home. All ok.
That is all. Pretty easy isn’t it? There are many other HTC One M8 coming soon, but in the meantime, check out 38 Tips, Tricks and Hidden features of this new smartphone.
