If you’re an enterprise junkie and iPhone user, iOS 14 has given you a new tool: the App Library, which organizes your apps into labeled groups so they’re easier to find. In fact, all your current apps can now be found there, and any future downloads will be placed there as well. (You can decide whether you want the apps to appear on your home screen as well; we’ll explain how later in this article.)
This new feature can be very useful, especially if you tend to download a lot of apps.
Automatic groupings
The App Library appears as a separate page on your home screen. Keep swiping left after updating to iOS 14; The Application Library will be the last page you hit.
It automatically organizes your apps into folders tagged with various categories. For example, right after I updated to the new OS, mine included Recently Added, Utilities, Productivity & Finance, Social, Creativity, Knowledge & Reading, Games, Entertainment, Health & Fitness, and Travel. Each folder is divided into four quadrants; each dial shows an icon representing an application. If there are more than four apps in a folder, the remaining icons are minimized and grouped into a single quadrant.
You can open an application directly from its icon in the Application Library. If the app is part of a set of smaller icons (and therefore too small to touch), tap anywhere on that quadrant and the entire category will fill your screen so you can choose the app you want.
Long-press any app in the App Library and a drop-down menu will let you delete it, use one of its features, or – if it’s not already there – copy the icon to your home screen. (This does not remove it from the Application Library).
If you can’t find an app, select the search field at the top; you will get an alphabetical list of your apps. You can type the name of the app you want or scroll down to find it.
However, you cannot decide where the new application will appear in the Application Library. For example, I installed an app called NYC 311 that offers alerts and information for the city. It landed in the “Recently Added” folder and that’s it as far as I can tell. I have to assume that it will automatically go to another category when it is no longer considered new. I couldn’t create my own category or move the app to a different existing category.
Move apps to App Library
If you want to clean your home screen, you can “remove” the icons so that they only appear in the App Library. For a single application:
- Long press the app you want to add on the home screen.
- Tap “Uninstall App”.
- Tap on the “Move to App Library” option.
You can also get rid of many home screen apps at once by long pressing an empty area on your home screen. Tap the “minus” icon in the corner of each app you want to remove from the home screen and select “Move to App Library”.
If you want to keep your home screen clean, you can set newly installed apps to appear only in the App Library.
- Go to Settings > Home Screen
- Select “Add to Home Screen” or “App Library Only”. You can also choose to show notification badges in the App Library.
As mentioned, the App Library is an interesting addition to the iOS arsenal, allowing for greater organization of apps and a cleaner, less crowded home screen. The lack of customization, however, is a major limitation, at least for me – unlike its Android counterpart, it doesn’t let you create your own groups or decide which app goes into which group. With any luck, Apple will improve the feature in the coming months.
