Looking Back at My 2022 Homescreen
The biggest changes are undercover…
You know the drill. Just as in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013 — it’s time to highlight my homescreen as I ended 2022.
As you can see, there’s not a huge amount of change on the surface. I did pull back from two homescreen widgets back to one. This obviously allows for four (well, really three) more app slots to be used. But I more did this because I’m increasingly using the left-side pane (one right-swipe over) for all my widget needs. It’s where I have Weather, Fitness, a Reminders list, one-tap Google Search, one-tap Bear note, and a handful of others.
Something else that disrupted my homescreen this year was the new iOS 14 lock screen capabilities. Notably, the ability to place widgets (more like Apple Watch complications) on this surface area also eased the need for certain apps to be front and center on the homescreen. Though as you can see below, there’s a good amount of overlap with what I just described for my left-side widgets. This is in part because I often am using the truly excellent photo lockscreen wallpapers. And in order to get the full effect of them, quite literally, you can’t use widgets. That said, I also absolutely love the emoji widget lockscreen wallpapers. So those rotate in to switch things up and widgets are most welcomed there, of course.
Back to the apps, as you’ll see, Reminders is now my main widget of choice on the homescreen, set to the things I have to get done Today. This can rotate to the Photos widgets if and when I’m done with such tasks.
1Password is back on my homescreen, where it was in 2020 (just tried it one screen over last year, but I use it too much). Tot is the same story. There are a number of other quick note-taking apps/services that I’m currently testing, but none are quite yet ready for primetime placement. Maybe more to come on the front next year…
Speaking of that general space, new this year is Notion, which I’m increasingly using for a variety of things, from tracking the movies/shows we’re watching/want to watch, to various updates from various GV portfolio companies, to a great catch-all for all my Matter highlights (more on that in a bit) via an API integration.
Overcast is back instead of Apple Podcasts, as it should be. It’s honestly just so much better. I keep trying to see how/if Apple is upgrading their own native app in the space and I keep being disappointed.
Matter added several layers of paint and polish to their aforementioned app this year. Here’s where I’ll once again disclose that it’s a GV investment, but I truly love it. It has gotten so much better this past year and is now one of my most-used apps. (The web app is so good too.)
Everything else is chalk to last year. Photos. Camera. Phone. Calendar. Maps.¹ Music. Audible. NYTimes. ESPN. Economist. Reeder. Mail.² Universe.³ Ulysses. Bear. Messages. Slack. Twitter.⁴ Safari.
Published on January 7, 2023 📆
Written from San Francisco, CA 🗺
Written on a 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 💻
Drinking a Laughing Monk Cobbler Cobbler Kettle Sour🍺¹ Yes, I still have Apple Maps here instead of Google Maps. I honestly still use Google Maps more, but I’m increasingly annoyed by the ads in Google Maps (maybe coming soon to Apple too?!). Apple Maps has the aesthetic advantage while Google Maps holds the data advantage. But it’s getting closer. If I need to be absolutely certain, I check both.
² Fuck email. I’ll know I’ve made it when I can remove this app from the homescreen. And yes, I have the Gmail app on my second screen, largely for work email.
³ Another GV investment, and the service where I manage my personal homepage.
⁴ This is actually the beta version of Twitter’s iOS app. There honestly doesn’t seem to be much different about it, except the icon. And maybe they’ll fix things faster when they break them in the current crazy times over there…
