Does App Library automatically organizes apps into folders?

[jhfenton]

From the glimpses I see of many folks disorganized phones, the App Library seems like a good solution. But I hope they offer the option to turn it off/hide it. I have everything organized into 16 folders on one home screen with two additional rows of frequently-used apps. I have no no second home screen page (just the widgets to the left), but now I keep accidentally swiping into the App Library. And I know exactly where everything is, while the App Library is a bit random.

For example, my App Library has a huge Reference & Reading folder—still labeled in English instead of Spanish, probably a beta quirk—that includes reading apps, news apps, weather apps, maps, translation and dictionary apps, Waze, transit, and Speedway (?). The Salud y condición library folder is pretty spot on. The Productividad library folder is huge, with two screens worth of seemingly unrelated apps. Educación is pretty good, except that random things are in other folders that I have in my personal Educación folder. I have a small Creatividad library folder that has a lot of things missing and miscategorized into other folders. And I have Ocio (leisure) and Lifestyle—in English again—folders that seem pretty random.

I expect that categorization will improve as the App Library category becomes something that developers care about, but it's never going to be as good—and specific—as my personal categorization.

 

[Ansath]

From the glimpses I see of many folks disorganized phones, the App Library seems like a good solution. But I hope they offer the option to turn it off/hide it. I have everything organized into 16 folders on one home screen with two additional rows of frequently-used apps. I have no no second home screen page (just the widgets to the left), but now I keep accidentally swiping into the App Library. And I know exactly where everything is, while the App Library is a bit random.

For example, my App Library has a huge Reference & Reading folder—still labeled in English instead of Spanish, probably a beta quirk—that includes reading apps, news apps, weather apps, maps, translation and dictionary apps, Waze, transit, and Speedway (?). The Salud y condición library folder is pretty spot on. The Productividad library folder is huge, with two screens worth of seemingly unrelated apps. Educación is pretty good, except that random things are in other folders that I have in my personal Educación folder. I have a small Creatividad library folder that has a lot of things missing and miscategorized into other folders. And I have Ocio (leisure) and Lifestyle—in English again—folders that seem pretty random.

I expect that categorization will improve as the App Library category becomes something that developers care about, but it's never going to be as good—and specific—as my personal categorization.

The categorisation comes from the primary & secondary ones picked by the developers of the app. So Waze, for example probably has Reference as one chosen by the developer. The question is, how does the app library decide which of the 2 to use.

 

[jhfenton]

The categorisation comes from the primary & secondary ones picked by the developers of the app. So Waze, for example probably has Reference as one chosen by the developer. The question is, how does the app library decide which of the 2 to use.

I don't know how they're choosing the broad categories for the App Library either. In the App Store, Waze's primary category is Navigation (Navegación). It doesn't show up under Reference (Referencia). But the App Store category list shows 25 categories, and I don't think Apple wanted that many folders in the App Library.

I personally have a Viajes home folder, which basically combines the Viajes (Travel) and Navegación categories from the App Store. (iOS 14 actually dumps Lyft, Uber, Lime, etc. into an Otro (Other) App Library folder.)

 

[Cinimod1000]

A lot of you are trying to reinvent the wheel. The App Library isn’t folders, iOS has that already,. As Craig mentioned in the keynote the intent is to get away from all the folders and homepages by putting all the apps in a single place sorted into categories. There is a graphical interface which to me is akin to a visual map, and alphabetical interface , with the graphical interface also using AI to help keep most used apps easy to find.

I’m a folders kind of guy myself and wasn’t all that interested in it at first, but I’ve decided to give it a try during the beta period. I’ve gone to a single homepage with just my most important apps. It will be interesting to see if by the end of summer how this experiment comes out. A lot will rest on how well I adapt to the pre-defined categories. Who knows, I might just end up with a brand new work flow. If not, worst case is that the app library will be out of the way, past a screen I rarely ever used in my previous setup.

This.
I thought the same at first. Had some apps in folders and some not. Muscle memory took me to each app when I needed it - on five home screens. But then I thought about it some more. I built a one pager home screen with a couple of the new widgets and added my most used apps. Now I use the home page with widgets 80% of the time, and the App Library the rest. Will give it a try throughout the entire beta period. It is a completely different paradigm and I sometimes struggle with it, because using muscle memory the old way was easy.............
And I am sure Apple will do more with the App Library function before final release of iOS14.