Oh yeah! Some greater parity with iOS would be lovely!
Like a real weather app! This must surely be the year the fully capitalise on the dark sky acquisition!
I’d love App Library on my iPad too! It’s completely changed how I manage my apps. I just use the App Library now and nothing else. On iPad I still have to manage and sort everything manually.
But I would recommend checking out Carrot Weather if you’re looking for a good app for iPad. I would say Dark Sky of course but thinking long term, it’s gonna be killed at some point surely so I’ve moved to Carrot.
! Never! Apple! Don’t listen to Ravi! I love my App Library! Much better than a simple list IMO. You can always swipe down for that list.
I like the way App Library sorts and arranges my stuff. The app I want is almost always one of the App Library suggested ones. There’s probably only been a handful of times where I’ve had to tap into a folder or search for what I want.
Curious why you’d prefer just a list, or why you’d think a (presumably unsorted/alphabetical) list would be better?
I still use the dark sky app for now. I’d be quite content if they just kept it around tbh, or if it became the default weather app. I love dark sky and really don’t want to have to use anything else. It’s the perfect weather app IMO.
I have looked at Carrot though. The fact there’s a Mac app is a nice positive, though you have to pay again for that version. It seems a bit expensive to me though.
Completely agree with Ravi that the API for dark sky must return and live on! That way if they do kill the app, there’s room for developers to come in and fill the void.
The folders are crap. You never know where the app you want is going to be so end up wasting time hunting for it. Some of the categorisations are just plain stupid.
What sort of animal would want an unsorted list? I think an Alphabetical list is just the most useful for most people. There’s a reason why your contacts aren’t auto arranged into random folders according to god knows what rules!
In all honesty I just use Spotlight in most instances as it’s by far the quickest way to find something not on your main screen.
Literally couldn’t agree with this more. Was v sad when Apple bought them, as I just don’t think it’s going to stick around.
The parallel is workflow > shortcuts of course, so I can’t imagine them keeping it alive when they could just kill it after half-arsing some of its features into weather and never bothering with the rest
I think App Library’s categorisation works really well in all honesty. The Apps don’t end up in places I don’t expect. As you say though, for when you want to find something, spotlight is the way and I fully agree! It’s what I use if the App Library algorithm fails me. It usually doesn’t, so it’s often faster than searching.
An alphabetical list would just be too much scrolling for me.
I currently have a productivity and finance folder which is including 1Password, excel etc, zoom, Amex and all my banking apps. This is ridiculous to me - finance is clearly a hugely separate category to my work apps (office, zoom, teams). I also further break things down such that 1Password and more utilities-like stuff is in a separate folder to actual document-creation type work things.
I also have a folder containing everything from tv and music apps, to Wimbledon, to Coral betting, to VR game apps. This is even more of a mess than the above example. I’d break down TV/film and music apps separately personally, but to put betting in there, Wimbledon is basically a news app, and then VR games. What is even going on there?
In conclusion, I think App Library is terrible. First example is super weird - is that how everyone’s works (finance and productivity together)? Second is one is just super ridiculous.
Finance and productivity are together for me. I have the same annoyance here. They should be separate. But I doubt many people have nearly as many financial apps as we do!
Categorisations seems dependant how the developer categorises their app in the store. Can’t say I have any situation on mine that replicates your second example, but it could do with some improving here!
What makes it for me are the suggestions, recently added, and the 3 big app icons for each folder. That’s where I’ll find 99% of the apps I’m looking for at any given moment. Machine learning seems to analyse your patterns to determine which 3 apps to display and how to order the folders (suggestions and recents are always at the top though). At an educated guess, the 3 factors that most heavily influence it are time of day, how often you launch the apps, and how often you use a specific category of app. It’s one of those the more you use it, the better it gets features.
You get the predictive power of App Library’s suggested apps by just pulling down on the 1st Home Screen anyway, which is often right what you want, and your cursor is already prepared to type for anything else.
Because that fits my workflow, with other less-used apps already well organised into folders and secondary home screens, I personally haven’t used App Library much (even though I’ve been on iOS 14 since beta 1 last summer.
On the rare occasion I have checked it, in it’s defence, I have found the categories do generally seem to make sense. One problem is that I have a lot of apps so many of the folders are too full for my liking. I would rather it worked this out and dynamically recategorised into more niche categories for me. Another thing is that it “doesn’t work” with Testflight apps and puts them all in the same category which is annoying.
Also, I know it was tongue-in-cheek, but a relationship-based contact management solution as suggested earlier in the thread could actually be very useful. I could imagine contacts being grouped into folders/categories of family, friends, work colleagues, etc and organised by their association to you. Probably dynamically in a similar style to App Library.
so I’ve moved to Carrot.
! Never! Apple! Don’t listen to Ravi! I love my App Library! Much better than a simple list IMO. You can always swipe down for that list.
for me are the suggestions, recently added, and the 3 big app icons for each folder. That’s where I’ll find 99% of the apps I’m looking for at any given moment. Machine learning seems to analyse your patterns to determine which 3 apps to display and how to order the folders (suggestions and recents are always at the top though). At an educated guess, the 3 factors that most heavily influence it are time of day, how often you launch the apps, and how often you use a specific category of app. It’s one of those the more you use it, the better it gets features.