Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders

Transcription

1 227 Chapter 7 Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders Your new iphone is very customizable. In this chapter we will show you how to move icons around and put your favorite icons just where you want them. You ve got up to 11 pages of icons to work with, and you can adjust the look and feel of those pages so it suits your tastes. Like a Mac computer or an ipad, the iphone has a Bottom Dock, where you can put the icons for your favorite apps. iphones come with four standard icons in the Bottom Dock, but you can replace these with other icons for your favorite apps to always have available at the bottom of your screen. In the new operating system, ios4, you can even move an entire folder of apps to the Bottom Dock. TIP: You can also move or delete icons using itunes on your computer. Check out our itunes User Guide in Chapter 30 for more information. 227

2 228 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders Moving Icons to the Bottom Dock Docking Them When you turn your iphone on, you ll notice the four icons locked to the Bottom Dock: Phone, Mail, Safari, and ipod. Suppose you decide you want to change one or more of these for apps you use more often. Fortunately, moving icons to and from the Bottom Dock is easy. Keep up to 4 icons that you want to see all the time. These icons will always remain visible even when you slide the other icon screens left/right. Bottom Dock Starting the Move Press the Home button to get to your Home screen. Now, touch and hold any icon on the Home screen for a couple of seconds. You ll notice that all the icons start to shake. Just try moving a couple of icons around at first. You ll see that when you move an icon down, the other icons in the row move to make space for it. Once you have the feel for how the icons move, you are ready to replace one of the Bottom Dock icons. While the icons are shaking, take the icon you wish to replace from the Bottom Dock and move it up to an area covered by other icons. If you move it to a large blank area, it will jump back to the dock. NOTE: You can have up to four icons in the Bottom Dock, so if you already have four there, you will have to remove one to replace it with a new one. Suppose you want to replace the standard ipod icon with your App Store icon. The first thing to do is just hold the ipod icon and move it up a row out of the Bottom Dock, as shown in Figure 7-1.

3 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders 229 To stop the icons shaking, tap your Home button. First, touch and hold any icon until you see all icons start to shake Then, drag and drop the icon onto the Bottom Dock now that you have an empty space for it. Then, touch and slide the icon out of the Bottom Dock to make room for the new one. Touch & Slide Finally, press the Home Button to complete the move (Stop the Icons from shaking). Touch Figure 7 1. Swapping icons in the Bottom Dock Next, locate your App Store icon and move it down to the Bottom Dock. As you ll see, the icon becomes sort of transparent until you actually set it into place. When you are sure that you have the icons just where you want them, simply press the Home button once and the icons will lock into place. Now, you have the App Store icon in the Bottom Dock, where you want it. Moving Icons to a Different Icon Page iphones can hold 16 icons on a page (not including the dock) and you can find these pages by swiping (right to left) on your Home screen. With all the cool apps available, it is not uncommon to have five, six, or even more pages of icons. You can have up to 11 pages filled with icons if you feel adventurous!

4 230 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders NOTE: You can also swipe from left to right on any screen except the Home screen. On the Home screen, swiping left to right takes you to Spotlight Search; see Chapter 2: Typing Tips, Copy/Paste, and Search for more information. You may have an icon you rarely use on your first page, and you want to move it way off to the last page. Or you may want to move an icon you often use from the last of the icons pages to the first page. Both are very easy to do; it s very much like moving icons to the Bottom Dock, as discussed previously. 1. Touch and hold any icon to initiate the moving process. 2. Touch and hold the icon you wish to move. As shown in Figure 7-2, let s say we want to move the ibooks icon to the first page. First, touch and hold any icon until you see all icons start to shake Touch & Slide Then, touch and slide the icon you want to move to another scr een. Once you get the icon to the correct page and location, just let go, then Press the Home Button to complete the move (Stop the Icons from shaking). Figure 7-2. Moving icons from one page to another 3. Now drag and drop the icon onto another page. To do this, you touch and hold the ibooks icon and drag it to the left. You will see all of your pages of icons move by. When you get to the first page, just release the icon, and it is now placed at the very beginning. 4. Press the Home key to complete the move and stop the icons from shaking.

5 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders 231 Deleting Icons Be careful it is as easy to delete an icon as it is to move it, but when you delete an icon on the iphone, you are actually deleting the program it represents. This means you won t be able to use the program again without reinstalling or re-downloading it. Depending on your Application Sync settings in itunes, the program may still reside in your Applications folder in itunes. In that case, you would be able to easily reinstall the deleted app if you wanted to by checking that application in the list of apps to sync in itunes. As Figure 7-3 shows, the deleting process is similar to the moving process. Touch and hold any icon to initiate deleting. Just as before, touching and holding makes the icons shake and allows you to move or delete them. NOTE: You may delete only programs you have downloaded to your iphone; the preinstalled icons and their associated programs can t be deleted. You can tell which programs can be deleted because the icons contain a small black x in the upper left corner. Just tap the x on the icon you d like to delete. You will be prompted to either delete, or cancel the delete request. If you select Delete, the icon and its related app are removed from your iphone. First, touch and hold any icon until you see all icons start to shake Confirm that you have the correct Icon selected, and touch Delete Then, touch the Black (X) on the corner of the icon you want to delete. Touch Touch Figure 7-3. Deleting an icon and its associated program

6 232 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders Resetting All Your Icon Locations (Factory Defaults) Occasionally, you might want to go back to the original, factory default icon settings. This might be the case when you ve moved too many new icons to your first page and want to see all the basic icons again. To do this, touch the Settings icon. Then touch General in the left column and, finally, scroll all the way to the bottom to touch Reset in the right column. NOTE: Built-in apps will get sorted back into the order they were in when Apple shipped the iphone. On the Reset screen, touch Reset Home Screen Layout near the bottom. Now all your icons will be returned to the original settings. CAUTION: Be careful you don t touch one of the other Reset options, as you can inadvertently erase your entire iphone if you touch the wrong button. If you do, you ll have to restore data from your itunes backup.

7 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders 233 Working with Folders New to ios4 is the ability to organize your apps into folders. Previously, each app existed in its spot on your Home page, and once you downloaded many apps, it was hard to keep track of what was where. Using folders will allow you to keep your games, your productivity apps, and other like-functioning apps together in folders. Each folder will be able to hold 12 apps which can really help you organize your iphone! Creating the Folder Creating folders in ios4 is intuitive and fun. 1. Hold down an app until all the apps start shaking (as you did before in the Moving Icons section). 2. Drag an app onto another like-functioning app. 3. For example, drag one Game onto another Game or one Utility onto another Utility. The iphone will initially create a name for the folder. 4. In this example, I dragged one sports-related game onto another and it created a folder called Sports. 5. Edit the folder name by touching the Name field and typing. I typed Sports Games as the name of this new folder. See Figure Press the Home button to set the new folder name. 7. Press the Home button to return to the Home screen and you will now see the new folder with the new name.

8 234 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders NOTE: You can place up to 12 app icons in a given folder. If you try to put more than that, you will see the new icon continually being pushed out of the folder, indicating that the folder is full. Touch the Name filed of the Folder to change or add to the name. Touch a Folder to see its contents. Drag an App onto another like app and a Folder will form. Touch an App to start it. Figure 7-4. Moving icons to create a folder Moving Folders Just like apps, folders can also be moved from one Home page to another. 1. Press and hold a folder until the folder and icons on the Home screen start to shake. 2. Touch and hold the folder and drag it to the spot on the screen (or to another Home screen) and then let go. 3. When you have the folder in the spot you desire, just press the Home button to complete the move. TIP: You can even move a folder down to the Bottom Dock if you like. This is a very handy way of having lots of apps right at your fingertips. See Figure 7-5.

9 CHAPTER 7: Organize Your iphone: Icons and Folders 235 Move a Folder down to the Bottom Dock to have access to up to 12 apps at once! Figure 7-5. Moving a folder to the Bottom Dock