A major new change that comes with iOS 14 along with the home screen widgets is the iPhone App Library. The feature offers a new way to manage the many applications you have with automatically generated categories, a new alphabetical view, the ability to hide application pages, and more. Read on to see how to use the new iPhone app library on iOS 14.
If you haven’t seen or experienced them yet, the new iOS 14 home screen widgets and App Library combine to provide the biggest revision of the iOS user interface since its launch.
What is the application library?
While the home screen widgets offer an updated user interface with customizable widgets of different sizes, the App Library offers some good options for organizing and simplifying the way you access apps with self-generated categories / folders, the option to hide app pages, a new way to manage downloads, an alphabetical list of apps and more. The App Library is at the bottom of your last iPhone app page.
Note: iOS 14 is currently only available as a developer beta, with the first public beta coming in July. Read more here on how to install it.
How to use iPhone app library on iOS 14
Accessing the application library
- Go to your last app page
- Swipe once more from right to left
- You will now see the App Library with automatically generated app categories
Using the application library
- You can touch an individual application to open it.
- Use the search bar at the top to find applications
- Tap the little four app packs in the lower right corner of a category to see all the apps in that app Library folder
- Scroll down from the top of the App Library to see an alphabetical list of all apps
- Interesting enough, I have not been successful launching the App Library with Siri
Hide iPhone application pages
If you like the idea of leaning more on the iPhone App Library, you can hide your app pages. That makes it faster to get to the App Library.
- Touch and hold a blank area of your home screen or any app page
- Once in edit mode, tap the dot icons on the app page at the bottom center of your screen
- Uncheck the pages of the application you want to hide
- Tap Done in the upper right corner
You can display your application pages at any time by reversing the steps above.
Manage the application library
After editing the application pages, you will see an alert that new downloads will be displayed in the Recently Added section of the Application Library. For now, the default is for new app downloads to appear on the app’s home screen / page as well, but you can change that in the Settings app.
If you want new downloads to only appear in the iPhone App Library and not appear on the home screen or on an app page, go to Settings> Home Screen and tap “App Library Only”.
There is also an option to get a notification badge for “Show in app library” if you want reminders and a shortcut.
Go further
- Touch and hold a category name or black space in the App Library to remove apps
- Touch and hold an individual app in the App Library to add it back to your home screen
- For now, there is no way to rename or rearrange auto-created App Library categories (hopefully that could come in an update)
- You can still use folders on the home screen or in the app pages, as well as the categories / folders in the App Library, they are separate
What do you think of the iPhone application library? Useful and valuable or do you think you won’t end up using it? Any changes you would like to see before the public release? Share your ideas in the comments below!
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