Five tips for better organizing your Apple Watch home screen!

Posted April 30, 20159 yr

The Apple Watch's limited screen real estate makes app organization more important than ever.

Fumbling around the tiny screen of an Apple Watch to hunt down a single app isn't very convenient or practical. You don't have the help of Spotlight, a keyboard, or folders to help find and organize apps like you can on iPhone and iPad. You can always use Siri, but if talking to your watch would be awkward or inappropriate, a better home screen layout can make it much easier to find apps.

Show us your home screen layout

1. Honeycomb, helix, and stacks

Since the Apple Watch was released, people have been organizing apps in all kinds of crazy and interesting ways. The three layouts shown above are all popular and for good reason — all of them allow apps to stand out more than they do in the standard large cluster. They also let you group similar apps together, which brings me to my next tip...

Thanks to @toolstrummer for sharing the helix layout!

2. Organize apps into groups or clusters

Keeping all apps of a certain kind in one area makes it easier to pick out apps when your zoomed all the way out. For example, clustering all your travel apps together means you always know roughly where to look for any particular travel app, and that makes finding it faster. If you see Uber on the far left of the screen, you know Foursquare and your airline apps must be lurking close by.

3. Let the clock face app fly solo

You can always get back to the clock face by pressing the Digital Crown, but if you're already on the screen tapping away, instinct might cause you to look around and try to tap the Clock icon to get back. Leaving it solo makes it easier to pick out. More importantly, it helps with with app discovery. When you install a new app on your Apple Watch and your clock face is by itself, the new app will always install to the left or the right of the clock face, making it super easy to find.

4. Remove what you don't need

Some kinds of apps just aren't meant to be attached to our wrists. If you don't need it on your Apple Watch as a necessity, remove it. If you transferred over all apps during your Apple Watch set up, or simply tried out new ones as you got them, don't be afraid to ditch them later. Not only will you reduce app clutter, you'll also get better battery life — less apps means less data to sync. That's a win, win.

5. Organize on your iPhone, not your Apple Watch

Organizing apps on the Apple Watch's tiny screen is super painful. Luckily, you also have the option of organizing apps with the Apple Watch app as well. Just tap on App Layout in the Apple Watch app and organize away. Not only is this method faster, you can see all your apps on one screen, which makes creating groupings a lot easier.

Your tips?

If you've found an awesome way to organize Apple Watch apps that isn't mentioned above, be sure to let me know in the comments!