My iPhone Home Screen in 2021

One of my favorite features of iOS 14 is the App Library. It’s so freeing not having to think about where to put a freshly installed app. And it allows to make more space for some widgets.

Bonus: not allowing red notification bubbles for anything that lives only onside the App Library is fantastic.

Dock

• Day One: Journaling should be as easily accessible as possible.
• Audible: I listen to a lot of audio books.
• Headspace: I want to become more mindful, making Headspace prominent might help to use it more (Spoiler: so far, it works).
• Camera: Most important reason to get an iPhone in the first place.

First Screen

• Readdle Calendars Widget: I like that the widget not only shows upcoming events but also the time remaining until your next meeting.
• Readdle Calendar: Keep coming back to this calendar app for its vertical week views. Looking at it, I might reclaim this space as the widget is probably enough.
• dict.cc plus: Still the best simple dictionary app. It’s fast and it provides lots of alternative translations.
• 1 Second Everyday: I’ve been using this since 2016 to summarize every year in seconds and it’s invaluable to me to recap my life in this way.
• Signal: My preferred Messenger for privacy and security (I do have WhatsApp but don’t allow notifications for it, making an incentive for people to contact me on Signal).
• Spotify
• Messages
• Mail: Came back to the stock app after trying many clients. I even abandoned my HEY.com subscription recently because I just love performant native apps too much.
• Pocket Casts: I tried many Podcast apps and keep coming back to Pocket Casts. Seamless sync across devices and the web is great. Having Lifetime plus as an early adopter is also nice. Strong contenders are Castor for its easy listening queue and Airr for its transcription with Readwise sync.
• Weather Widget
• Phone
• Bear: My go-to note taking app. I love it for its tagging system but I’m desperately waiting for the big update with the new editor.
• Reminders: Recently switched from Things (because it’s great) and Todoist (because of collaboration) to the native app to simplify my setup.
• Photos: Primary source of truth for all my photos.
• Endel: I like Endel’s Focus music while working.
• Notion
• Safari
• Books: I prefer this over Kindle for it’s better sync and highlighting across devices.

Second Screen

• Widget Stack of Memories: Day One, Google Photos, Apple Photos.
• Readwise: No better way to collect, keep and resurface knowledge across all sorts of books and articles.
• Reeder: Without a doubt the best RSS reader. Since v5 it can sync subscriptions via iCloud, making external services obsolete.
• Health Mate: I have a watch and body scale by withings and they really offer a solid app.
• VSCO: Best analog-style filters for years. Though I’m not using them as often anymore to justify the subscription.
• Widget Stack: Unread Reeder Articles + HealthMate Stats.
• Sensor Blue: I’ve got some cheap thermo/hygrometers with bluetooth, this app shows their data.
• Google Photos: It’s so convenient to share photos with your partner, family and friends. Been looking for alternatives forever.
• Notes: My “it doesn’t spark in a Marie Kondo way joy but I stillneed to keep it for various reasons” sort of archive. Great that PDFs are indexed (and even OCR’ed).
• Raindrop.io: Great place to store bookmarks, a very active developer, permanent copies of the bookmarked pages, a public API and support for IFTTT.
• Corona-Warn-App: Can’t wait for the day we don’t need this anymore.
• Medium: I’m in the middle evaluating if a subscription is worth the cost.
• Spaces: A great new note-taking app with a lot of inspiration drawn from Bear and Agenda (I’m still waiting for some features to use it productively though).