1. Home screen widget: make the desktop more personalized

How to make the mobile desktop more personalized? The usual operations are to change wallpapers and arrange app icons, but now you can also create widgets after updating to iOS 14.

Widgets allow placement anywhere on the desktop, helping to view information at a glance, ideal for tracking commutes, fitness records, calendar events or news reports.

The method of adding is very simple. Press and hold the home screen and click the "+" in the upper left corner to select different types of widgets. Currently, most of them are system applications, such as photos, weather, clock, memo, To-dos, screen time, and more.

Compared with old Android desktop widgets, Apple has obviously restricted the size of iOS widgets. The system provides three sizes: 2×2 (small), 2×4 (medium) and 4×4 (large). The larger the ratio, the richer the information displayed. The app's rounded icons that have been squeezed out due to the addition of widgets will automatically move to the next screen.

If you think there are too many widgets on the desktop but you don’t use them frequently, you might as well try dragging one widget on top of another to create a stack and flipping up and down to view it to fully utilize the widgets. Make use of the space on your home screen.

It is worth mentioning that intelligently stacked widgets will be judged based on factors such as time, location, and activities, and the corresponding interface will be displayed at the appropriate time.

In addition, in addition to placing the widget on the home screen, you can also place the widget in the "Today" view (which is what we often call a negative screen).

Speaking of the "Today" view, people will inevitably want to compare the new widget with the original Widget (notification center widget). In fact, compared to "practical" Widgets, widgets are more like an information display window, or an app launcher. Zhong Ying, the developer of "JSBox", pointed out three major "flaws" that he believes widgets have. 》:

Weak interaction ability. Clicking on the widget will jump directly to the app, so continuous tapping operations cannot be performed, such as calculator widgets;

Data cannot be actively updated. Widgets prefer "static" information display;

The page is less dynamic. Because the size style has been fixed, it is less flexible than Widget.

Even so, the advantages of widgets are still obvious. Not only do they occupy a more critical and eye-catching position on the home screen, they are also prioritized above Widgets in the "Today" view.

As mentioned earlier, currently most widgets are provided for system applications, and we expect third parties to come up with their own tricks.

2. App Resource Library: The system automatically organizes apps for you

Swipe the home screen to the last page, and you will see a new space "App Resource Library" introduced in iOS 14. Displayed in the form of folders, it can automatically classify and organize all applications intelligently, with a simple and beautiful view.

"WeChat" is classified as social networking, "Taobao" is classified as shopping and food, only a few apps such as "Alipay" are not classified as efficiency and finance, and most of the categories are within the scope of understanding. , easy to find and access quickly.

In addition to classifying products according to their own characteristics, the two folders in the first row of the "App Resource Library" will be updated in real time:

The "Recommendations" folder will be classified according to time, location or Activity and other signals are used to recommend apps you may want to open;

The "Recently Added" folder will display your recently downloaded apps or recently used App Clips (Apple applets, discussed below) ).

I have to mention the search function at the top of the "App Resource Library", which not only supports searching for app names, but also displays all apps in alphabetical order, which is helpful for quick search.

After understanding the "App Resource Library" and widgets, you can make a major transformation on your desktop. As you can see, the three refreshing-looking home screen screenshots below have two things in common: a small number of apps displayed and a small number of pages (the white dot above the Dock bar corresponds to the page).